by Louise Welsh
“Don’t let me disturb you.”
Mrs Wilson sank into the rocking-chair by the fire and gently tipped to and fro.
“Have you finished your tea, darling boy?” she asked. “Are you going to read me a story from your book? Oh, there is Lady scratching at the door. Let her in for mamma.”
Hilary opened the door and a bald old pug-dog with bloodshot eyes waddled in.
“Come, Lady! Beautiful one. Come to mistress! What is wrong with her, poor pet lamb?”
The bitch had stepped just inside the room and lifted her head and howled. “What has frightened her, then? Come, beauty! Coax her with a sponge-cake, Hilary.”
She reached forward to the table to take the dish and doing so noticed Florence’s empty tea-cup. On the rim was a crimson smear, like the imprint of a lip. She gave a sponge-finger to Hilary, who tried to quieten the pug, then she leaned back in her chair and studied Florence again as she had studied her when she engaged her a few weeks earlier. The girl’s looks were appropriate enough, appropriate to a clergyman’s daughter and a governess. Her square chin looked resolute, her green eyes innocent, her dress was modest and unbecoming. Yet Mrs Wilson could detect an excitability, even feverishness, which she had not noticed before and she wondered if she had mistaken guardedness for innocence and deceit for modesty.
She was reaching this conclusion – rocking back and forth – when she saw Florence’s hand stretch out and turn the cup round in its saucer so that the red stain was out of sight.
“What is wrong with Lady?” Hilary asked, for the dog would not be pacified with sponge-fingers, but kept making barking advances farther into the room, then growling in retreat.
“Perhaps she is crying at the new moon,” said Florence and she went to the window and drew back the curtain. As she moved, her skirts rustled. “If she has silk underwear as well!” Mrs Wilson thought. She had clearly heard the sound of taffetas, and she imagined the drab, shiny alpaca dress concealing frivolity and wantonness.
“Open the door, Hilary,” she said. “I will take Lady away. Vernon shall give her a run in the park. I think a quiet read for Hilary and then an early bedtime, Miss Chasty. He looks pale this evening.”
“Yes, Mrs Wilson.” Florence stood respectfully by the table, hiding the cup.
“The hypocrisy!” Mrs Wilson thought and she trembled as she crossed the landing and went downstairs.
She hesitated to tell her husband of her uneasiness, knowing his susceptibilities to the kind of women whom his conscience taught him to deplore. Hidden below the apparent urbanity of their married life were old unhappinesses – little acts of treachery and disloyalty which pained her to remember, bruises upon her peace of mind and her pride: letters found, a pretty maid dismissed, an actress who had blackmailed him. As he read the Lesson in church, looking so perfectly upright and honourable a man, she sometimes thought of his escapades; but not with bitterness or cynicism, only with pain at her memories and a whisper of fear about the future. For some time she had been spared those whispers and had hoped that their marriage had at last achieved its calm. To speak of Florence as she must might both arouse his curiosity and revive the past. Nevertheless, she had her duty to her son to fulfil and her own anger to appease and she opened the library door very determinedly.
“Oliver, I am sorry to interrupt your work, but I must speak to you.”
He put down the Strand Magazine quite happily, aware that she was not a sarcastic woman.
Oliver and his son were extraordinarily alike. “As soon as Hilary has grown a moustache we shall not know them apart,” Mrs Wilson often said, and her husband liked this little joke which made him feel more youthful. He did not know that she added a silent prayer – “O God, please do not let him be like him, though.”
“You seem troubled, Louise.” His voice was rich and authoritative. He enjoyed setting to rights her little domestic flurries and waited indulgently to hear of some tradesman’s misdemeanour or servant’s laziness.
“Yes, I am troubled about Miss Chasty.”
“Little Miss Mouse? I was rather troubled myself. I noticed two spelling faults in Hilary’s botany essay, which she claimed to have corrected. I said nothing before the boy, but I shall acquaint her with it when the opportunity arises.”
“Do you often go to the schoolroom, then?”
“From time to time. I like to be sure that our choice was wise.”
“It was not. It was misguided and unwise.”
“All young people seem slip-shod nowadays.”
“She is more than slip-shod. I believe she should go. I think she is quite brazen. Oh, yes, I should have laughed at that myself if it had been said to me an hour ago, but I have just come from the schoolroom and it occurs to me that now she has settled down and feels more secure – since you pass over her mistakes – she is beginning to take advantage of your leniency and to show herself in her true colours. I felt a sinister atmosphere up there, and I am quite upset and exhausted by it. I went up to hear Hilary’s reading. They were finishing tea and the room was full of the most overpowering scent, her scent. It was disgusting.”
“Unpleasant?”
“No, not at all. But upsetting.”
“Disturbing?”
She would not look at him or reply, hearing no more indulgence or condescension in his voice, but the quality of warming interest.
“And then I saw her teacup and there was a mark on it – a red smear where her lips had touched it. She did not know I saw it and as soon as she noticed it herself she turned it round, away from me. She is an immoral woman and she has come into our house to teach our son.”
“I have never noticed a trace of artificiality in her looks. It seemed to me that she was rather colourless.”
“She has been sly. This evening she looked quite different, quite flushed and excitable. I know that she had rouged her lips or painted them or whatever those women do.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“I shall observe her for a day or two,” Oliver said, trying to keep anticipation from his voice.
“I should like her to go at once.”
“Never act rashly. She is entitled to a quarter’s notice unless there is definite blame. We should make ourselves very foolish if you have been mistaken. Oh, I know that you are sure; but it has been known for you to misjudge others. I shall take stock of her and decide if she is unsuitable. She is still Miss Mouse to me and I cannot think otherwise until I see the evidence with my own eyes.”
“There was something else as well,” Mrs Wilson said wretchedly.
“And what was that?”
“I would rather not say.” She had changed her mind about further accusations. Silk underwear would prove, she guessed, too inflammatory.
“I shall go up ostensibly to mention Hilary’s spelling faults.” He could not go fast enough and stood up at once.
“But Hilary is in bed.”
“I could not mention the spelling faults if he were not.”
“Shall I come with you?”
“My dear Louise, why should you? It would look very strange – a deputation about two spelling faults.”
“Then don’t be long, will you? I hope you won’t be long.”
He went to the schoolroom, but there was no one there. Hilary’s storybook lay closed upon the table and Miss Chasty’s sewing was folded neatly. As he was standing there looking about him and sniffing hard, a maid came in with a tray of crockery.
“Has Master Hilary gone to bed?” he asked, feeling rather foolish and confused.
The only scent in the air was a distinct smell – even a haze – of cigarette smoke.
“Yes, sir.”
“And Miss Chasty – where is she?”
“She went to bed, too, sir.”
“Is she unwell?”
“She spoke of a chronic head, sir.”
The maid stacked the cups and saucers in the cupboard and went out. Nothing was wrong with the room apart from the smell of smoke and Mr Wils
on went downstairs. His wife was waiting in the hall. She looked up expectantly, in some relief at seeing him so soon.
“Nothing,” he said dramatically. “She has gone to bed with a headache. No wonder she looked feverish.”
“You noticed the scent.”
“There was none,” he said. “No trace. Nothing. Just imagination, dear Louise. I thought that it must be so.”
He went to the library and took up his magazine again, but he was too disturbed to read and thought with impatience of the following day.
Florence could not sleep. She had gone to her room, not with a headache but to escape conversations until she had faced the predicament alone. This she was doing, lying on the honeycomb quilt which, since maids do not wait on governesses, had not been turned down.
The schoolroom this evening seemed to have been wreathed about with a strange miasma; the innocent nature of the place polluted in a way that she could not understand or have explained. Something new, it seemed, had entered the room – the scent had clung about her clothes; the stained cup was her own cup, and her handkerchief with which she had rubbed it clean was still reddened; and finally, as she stared in the mirror, trying to reestablish her personality, the affected little laugh which startled her had come from herself. It had driven her from the room.
“I cannot explain the inexplicable,” she thought wearily and began to prepare herself for bed. Homesickness hit her like a blow on the head. “Whatever they do to me, I have always my home,” she promised herself. But she could not think who “They” might be; for no one in this house had threatened her. Mrs Wilson had done no more than irritate her with her commonplace fussing over Hilary and her dog, and Florence was prepared to overcome much more than irritation. Mr Wilson’s pomposity, his constant watch on her works, intimidated her, but she knew that all who must earn their living must have fears lest their work should not seem worth the wages. Hilary was easy to manage; she had quickly seen that she could always deflect him from rebelliousness by opening a new subject for conversation; any idea would be a counter-attraction to naughtiness; he wanted her to sharpen his wits upon. “And is that all that teaching is, or should be?” she had wondered. The servants had been good to her, realising that she would demand nothing of them. She had suffered great loneliness, but had foreseen it as part of her position. Now she felt fear nudging it away. “I am not lonely any more,” she thought. “I am not alone any more. And I have lost something.” She said her prayers; then, sitting up in bed, kept the candle alight while she brushed her hair and read the Bible.
“Perhaps I have lost my reason,” she suddenly thought, resting her finger on her place in the Psalms. She lifted her head and saw her shadow stretch up the powdery, rose-sprinkled wall. “How can I keep that secret?” she wondered. “When there is no one to help me do it? Only those who are watching to see it happen.”
She was not afraid in her bedroom as she had been in the schoolroom, but her perplexed mind found no replies to its questions. She blew out the candle and tried to fall asleep, but lay and cried for a long time, and yearned to be at home again and comforted in her mother’s arms.
In the morning she met kind enquiries. Nurse was so full of solicitude that Florence felt guilty. “I came up with a warm drink and put my head round the door but you were in the land of Nod so I drank it myself. I should take a grey powder; or I could mix you a gargle. There are a lot of throats about.”
“I am quite better this morning,” said Florence and she felt calmer as she sat down at the schoolroom-table with Hilary. “Yet, it was all true,” her reason whispered. “The morning hasn’t altered that.”
“You have been crying,” said Hilary. “Your eyes are red.”
“Sometimes people’s eyes are red from other causes – headaches and colds.” She smiled brightly.
“And sometimes from crying, as I said. I should think usually from crying.”
“Page fifty-one,” she said, locking her hands together in her lap.
“Very well.” He opened the book, pressed down the pages and lowered his nose to them, breathing the smell of print. “He is utterly sensuous,” she thought. “He extracts every pleasure, every sensation, down to the most trivial.”
They seemed imprisoned in the schoolroom, by the silence of the rest of the house and by the rain outside. Her calm began to break up into frustration and she put her hands behind her chair and pressed them against the hot mesh of the fireguard to steady herself. As she did so, she felt a curious derangement of both mind and body; of desire unsettling her once sluggish peaceful nature, desire horribly defined, though without direction.
“I have soon finished those,” said Hilary, bringing his sums and placing them before her. She glanced at her palms which were criss-crossed deep with crimson where she had pressed them against the fireguard, then she took up her pen and dipped it into the red ink.
“Don’t lean against me, Hilary,” she said.
“I love the scent so much.”
It had returned, musky, enveloping, varying as she moved.
She ticked the sums quickly, thinking that she would set Hilary more work and escape for a moment to calm herself – change her clothes or cleanse herself in the rain. Hearing Mr Wilson’s footsteps along the passage, she knew that her escape was cut off and raised wild-looking eyes as he came in. He mistook panic for passion, thought that by opening the door suddenly he had caught her out and laid bare her secret, her pathetic adoration.
“Good morning,” he said musically and made his way to the window-seat. “Don’t let me disturb you.” He said this without irony, although he thought: “So it is that way the wind blows! Poor creature!” He had never found it difficult to imagine women were in love with him.
“I will hear your verbs,” Florence told Hilary, and opened the French Grammar as if she did not know them herself. Her eyes – from so much crying – were a pale and brilliant green, and as the scent drifted in Oliver’s direction and he turned to her, she looked fully at him.
“Ah, the still waters!” he thought and stood up suddenly. “Ils vont,” he corrected Hilary and touched his shoulder as he passed. “Are you attending to Miss Chasty?”
“Is she attending to me?” Hilary murmured. The risk was worth taking, for neither heard. His father appeared to be sleep-walking and Florence deliberately closed her eyes, as if looking down were not enough to blur the outlines of her desire.
“I find it difficult,” Oliver said to his wife, “to reconcile your remarks about Miss Chasty with the young woman herself. I have just come from the schoolroom and she was engaged in nothing more immoral than teaching French verbs – that not very well incidentally.”
“But can you explain what I have told you?”
“I can’t do that,” he said gaily. For who can explain a jealous woman’s fancies? he implied.
He began to spend more time in the schoolroom; from surveillance, he said. Miss Chasty, though not outwardly of an amorous nature, was still not what he had at first supposed. A suppressed wantonness hovered beneath her primness. She was the ideal governess in his eye – irreproachable, yet not unapproachable. As she was so conveniently installed, he could take his time in divining the extent of her willingness; especially as he was growing older and the game was beginning to be worth more than the triumph of winning it. To his wife, he upheld Florence, saw nothing wrong save in her scholarship, which needed to be looked into – this, the explanation for his more frequent visits to the schoolroom. He laughed teasingly at Louise’s fancies.
The schoolroom indeed became a focal point of the house – the stronghold of Mr Wilson’s desire and his wife’s jealousy.
“We are never alone,” said Hilary. “Either Papa or Mamma is here. Perhaps they wonder if you are good enough for me.”
“Hilary!” His father had heard the last sentence as he opened the door and the first as he hovered outside listening. “I doubt if my ears deceived me. You will go to your room while you think of a suitable a
pology and I think of an ample punishment.”
“Shall I take my history book with me or shall I just waste time?”
“I have indicated how to spend your time.”
“That won’t take long enough,” said Hilary beneath his breath as he closed the door.
“Meanwhile, I apologise for him,” said his father. He did not go to his customary place by the window, but came to the hearthrug where Florence stood behind her chair. “We have indulged him too much and he has been too much with adults. Have there been other occasions?”
“No, indeed, sir.”
“You find him tractable?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And are you happy in your position?”
“Yes.”
As the dreaded, the now so familiar scent began to wreath about the room, she stepped back from him and began to speak rapidly, as urgently as if she were dying and must make some explanation while she could. “Perhaps, after all, Hilary is right and you do wonder about my competence – and if I can give him all he should have. Perhaps a man would teach him more….”
She began to feel a curious infraction of the room and of her personality, seemed to lose the true Florence, and the room lightened as if the season had been changed.
“You are mistaken,” he was saying. “Have I ever given you any hint that we were not satisfied?”
Her timidity had quite dissolved and he was shocked by the sudden boldness of her glance.
“I should rather give you a hint of how well pleased I am.”
“Then why don’t you?” she asked.
She leaned back against the chimneypiece and looped about her fingers a long necklace of glittering green beads. “Where did these come from?” she wondered. She could not remember ever having seen them before, but she could not pursue her bewilderment, for the necklace felt familiar to her hands, much more familiar than the rest of the room.
“When shall I?” he was insisting. “This evening, perhaps, when Hilary is in bed?”
“Then who is he, if Hilary is to be in bed?” she wondered. She glanced at him and smiled again. “You are extraordinarily alike,” she said. “You and Hilary.” “But Hilary is a little boy,” she reminded herself. “It is silly to confuse the two.”