The Custodian of Paradise

by Wayne Johnston

  My father had sent that anonymous letter to the Morning Post. How close to catastrophe we had come. How close to it we might still be, for there was no telling what else, in his present state of agitation, he might do. But I could think of no way that anyone could trace the forged letter back to him. And no one at the school had really suffered from it.

  The next day, at Bishop Spencer, Miss Emilee again summoned me to her office.

  “It seems that I owe you an apology, Miss Fielding,” she said. “Headmaster Reeves has discovered who sent the letter.”

  “Who was it?” I asked, thinking that she was about to name my father.

  “I would not tell you if I thought you would not find out from someone else. Someone who might be less than fully informed. It was the Smallwood boy.”

  I was so startled I all but stood up.

  “What is the matter?” said Miss Emilee.

  “No. No, I’m sure it wasn’t him,” I said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “How do they know he wrote the letter?”

  “It seems that he was not so clever as he thought. Headmaster Reeves determined that the letter had to have been written by one of the dormitory boys. It contains information about dormitory life that only they would know. Of course, there are many dorm boys. But on the date that it was postmarked all of them had gone home for Christmas. Only one dorm boy, this Smallwood, was in St. John’s over Christmas.”

  I was as much responsible for Smallwood’s predicament as my father was. More so. I should have lied more vaguely than I had, should never have named anyone as the father of my child. Should have done what I was ashamed to do. Confessed to a casual liaison with some man whose name I didn’t know and of whom I could give nothing but a vague description. But I could not, partly because the thought of the revulsion and contempt with which my father would regard me was unbearable, and partly because of my memory of that afternoon in the judge’s house. I had been terrified of what might happen to my father if I refused to give him any name. Never to know the name of my father or the father of my baby. I feared he would at last suffer the breakdown it seemed he had been staving off for years and start hurling accusations in public about my patrimony and my child’s. And so I had chosen as a surrogate for Prowse the hapless Smallwood, with results for which I was responsible, however impossible to anticipate they had been. Even my father, I was certain, had not written the letter to the Morning Post in order to get revenge on Smallwood in particular. The letter had been a general lashing out, against Bishop Feild, against Headmaster Reeves for having admitted such a student as Smallwood in the first place. Against the reputation of the school, among whose boys, he probably believed, were my “true” father’s son or sons, boys who two people, my mother and my father’s “rival,” knew were my half-brothers. I had no doubt that, given his state of mind, my father believed the letter would be published, and that it was only by sheer fluke that the finger of blame seemed to point at Smallwood. He would have had no way of knowing that the postmark on the letter would implicate Smallwood.

  I decided to confess to writing the letter. It seemed to me that I had little to lose by doing so. I would be expelled, but that would merely provide me with the excuse I needed for leaving school just months short of graduation. My father’s reputation, having survived divorce, would survive this.

  There was the question of how he would react if I confessed to doing something he had done. But I knew that my father would never sacrifice himself for me, never own up to his bit of mischief for my sake. Or for Smallwood’s. The certainty that he would allow me to be blamed for his crime made me queasy with sadness.

  I all but ran from Spencer to the Feild, where I planned to seek out Headmaster Reeves and tell him that Smallwood was innocent, that I was the writer of the letter. School was out for the day, the playing field deserted, but I could see a light in what Prowse had once pointed out to me as Reeves’ office. A snowstorm that I sensed would soon get much worse had started. The wind was at my back, gusting so hard from the east that I twice fell forward onto my hands, despite my cane. New snow sifting on top of the old was already forming small dunelike drifts that I waded through without bothering to hike my dress. I ran up the steps to the main door that I feared might be locked but that gave way so easily that in my haste I fell forward again, this time onto the floor wet with melted snow. I picked myself up and made my way through the dark and unfamiliar hallways, doubling back several times until at last I saw a closed door with a frosted window and a light inside.

  I knocked but did not wait for an answer, opening the door to find Headmaster Reeves standing at the window behind his desk, his hands behind his back. He turned to face me.

  “What do you mean, barging in like this?” he said. “Spencer girls are not permitted in my school. I know you. I have seen you out there, on the grounds, talking with the boys. You’re the one they all call Fielding.”

  “I’ve come about the letter,” I said. “Smallwood didn’t write it. I did.”

  “Who told you Smallwood wrote it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I wrote it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said and turned back to the window as if to resume his brooding contemplation of the storm.

  “I wrote it,” I said. “To get back at Smallwood. He made a fool of me one day by spreading rumours about my mother.”

  “It is you who made a fool of yourself in front of all the boys. Not once but many times.”

  “Then you and I have at least one thing in common.”

  He turned to face me again.

  “You impudent thing.” Prowse appeared to have modelled his appearance after Headmaster Reeves. Hair parted down the middle and brushed back. A paisley vest inside his longcoat. But also a florid black moustache and tufted eyebrows left untrimmed in the hope of achieving some inscrutable effect. His face, his neck, even his hands and wrists were red with indignation.

  “I am confessing to writing the letter. That, I am willing to wager, is something Smallwood has not done.”

  “That, in his case, would be the honourable thing. In yours, an obscurely motivated lie. Get out of my office this instant.”

  “I will tell everyone I wrote the letter. And then this injustice will be common knowledge.”

  “While I cannot say with absolute certainty that Smallwood wrote that letter, there is more evidence that tends to that conclusion than to any other. What evidence do you have that you wrote it?”

  I thought of the book back home in my father’s study with its perforated pages, all the missing words and characters that comprised the letter to the Morning Post.

  I can show you the book, I almost said, from which I cut with one of my father’s scalpels every word of that letter to the Morning Post. My father’s scalpel. My father’s book. Suspicion might still fall on him.

  “I am confessing,” I said. “Surely that is all the proof you need.”

  “I know of those two books you left in her library where anyone could find them. I believe, Miss Fielding, that you are no more than a mischief-maker. A trouble-maker who makes trouble not only for others but for herself. Perhaps the answer to your behaviour lies in the way you were raised. The example set for you at an early age. One of recklessness and irresponsibility.”

  “And where, Headmaster, does the answer to your behaviour lie?”

  “Why you—if you were—”

  “What? Half your size?”

  “If you were not a girl, I would teach you a lesson.”

  “I would hate to have my gender get in the way of benefitting from your tutelage.”

  “Many a boy in this school has learned from me the hard way.”

  “I’m sure they have. I would be honoured if you set about my education as you would were I a boy.”

  “I can see nothing in your future, Miss Fielding, but perdition. You cannot flout authority or regard the whole of society with complete contempt and expect to prosper. You will drop i
nto the dregs, mark my words. You are halfway there already. The great pity of all this is that your poor father—”

  “Was once married to a woman who, since leaving him and me, has prospered in New York.”

  “You may be interested to know that, at this moment, in the manual training centre, Smallwood is learning the hard way from the boys of Bishop Feild.”

  They were not yet in the manual training centre by the time I got outdoors. The centre was behind the main hall and it was for this reason that I hadn’t seen the boys while I was on my way to Reeves. There were about fifteen of them crowded around Smallwood, who was holding together at the throat and chest his ragged jacket as if he believed the others meant to steal it from him. His glasses were rimed with snow, the lenses all but obscured, as if he dared not drop his guard long enough to clean them. His peaked cap lay nearby in the snow.

  “Look, Smallwood,” I heard Prowse say, “I don’t know if you did it, but Reeves says we’ve got to blame someone or none of us will graduate.”

  “I did it,” I shouted. “I sent the letter.”

  “Go away, Fielding,” Prowse said.

  “I did it,” I said, “to get back at Smallwood.”

  “For what?”

  “He insulted me. Said things about my mother.”

  “Then why do you care what happens to him now?” Prowse said.

  I was both surprised and pleased to hear a hint of envy in his voice.

  “Because I do. I’ve changed my mind.”

  I paid little attention to what they said after that. They took me into the manual training centre and bent me over a wooden sawhorse with the apparent intention of flogging me with my cane. I heard Prowse say that Smallwood should have “first go.”

  “I don’t want to,” Smallwood said.

  There was laughter and Prowse said something that I couldn’t hear, after which they left, laughing and shouting.

  I straightened up from the sawhorse. I thought I was alone until Smallwood spoke.

  “Why? I never said a word about your mother.”

  “Put the cane on the floor and leave,” I said. I heard the cane hit the floor, then Smallwood’s departing footsteps. As if he, as if all of them, were still there, I did not turn around. My face was hot with spite, shame, humiliation.

  When I left the centre, it was dark outside. Sleet-flecked snow stung my face as I began my way across the field. I cleared a path with my cane, beating my way through waist-deep snowdrifts as the wind roared high above me in the treetops.

  That night, I lay awake, fully clothed, on my bed, waiting for my father to come home.

  He did so earlier than usual because of the storm. I heard him move about for a few minutes. Then, with a loud squeaking of his chair, he settled down. I got up and went downstairs to the front room, where a layer of coal he had just put in the fireplace was blazing. He was in his chair, staring at the fire.

  “You’re home early,” I said. “Would you like something to eat?”

  “Why are you up?” he said. “You need your sleep.”

  “A woman in my condition.”

  “A girl.”

  “Tomorrow, Father, I will be expelled from Bishop Spencer.”

  He yawned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Expelled,” I said. “Tomorrow, Miss Emilee is going to expel me.”

  “You didn’t tell her—”

  “About my condition? No. Something else.”

  “What?” he said, looking hard at me.

  “Did you hear about the letter that was written to the Morning Post?” I said.

  “What—what letter?”

  “An anonymous letter. Made with words cut out from books. A letter about the dorm at Bishop Feild. About how bad things are. No coal for heat. Rats. Not enough food. The masters keeping school fees for themselves.”

  “I haven’t heard a thing about it.”

  “I confessed to writing it. Today. I told Headmaster Reeves.”

  “Why on earth did you do that?”

  “Reeves was blaming Smallwood for it.”

  “Then Smallwood is to blame.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Why did you confess, girl—?”

  “Because Smallwood is the father of my child. I can’t help feeling something for him—”

  “This is ridiculous, girl. Ridiculous. Absurd.”

  “I have to leave school, anyway. Besides, why do you assume that I didn’t write it?”

  “Of course you didn’t. I mean, why would you?”

  “Why would Smallwood?”

  “Because he is low-born.”

  Chapter Five

  “I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT YOU WROTE THAT LETTER,” MISS Emilee said.

  “You have been speaking with Headmaster Reeves.”

  “My opinions are formed independently of his.”

  “Do you believe, like Headmaster Reeves, that Smallwood wrote the letter?”

  “No. I do not. I believe you are protecting someone else.” She looked at me as if to say that, as she already knew who this someone was, there was no point in my withholding the name.

  “I am not protecting Smallwood. Merely making sure he isn’t blamed for what I did.”

  “Yet you say you did it so that he would be blamed.”

  “I had a change of heart. I wish I had it before I sent the letter.”

  “I have read the letter. It does not implicate Smallwood. If you had meant to get him into trouble, you would have found a better way.”

  “Headmaster Reeves is certain Smallwood wrote that letter.”

  “So he says.”

  “You think Headmaster Reeves is lying?”

  “His judgment is imperfect. In this case.”

  “So you at least believe that Smallwood didn’t write it.”

  “The letter neither implicates nor absolves him.”

  “Yet you think it absolves me?”

  “Yes. It was written by a boy. Or a man.”

  “Neither is difficult to imitate. I have been imitating boys for years.”

  “No, Miss Fielding. You have been spending time with boys. You have never wanted to be one of them. Never imitated them. Merely sported with them. As you do with everyone. Including me.”

  “I have confessed to writing the letter, Miss Stirling. Everyone knows that.”

  “Confessions can be retracted.”

  “You want me to lie?”

  “To stop lying. To me, if to no one else.”

  “I wrote the letter.”

  “When is the baby due?”

  I was so unprepared for the question that I could not speak, only wince and look away from her. My face felt as though it must be scarlet red.

  Miss Emilee smiled. “Caught off guard and stuck for words. A sight I thought I’d never see.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” I managed to blurt out at last. “That is a reckless accusation.”

  “Miss Fielding. Two weeks ago, long before the matter of the letter to the Morning Post, your father wrote to me saying he believed that you were pre-consumptive. In need of prolonged bedrest. And therefore you would soon be leaving school. To convalesce with your mother in New York.”

  “I have been feeling poorly. Fatigued. Feverish sometimes. My father is a doctor. A chest doctor.”

  Miss Emilee smiled again.

  “Miss Fielding. The expression on your face is all the proof I need. But if you wish to know how I guessed your secret—and it was just a guess—I didn’t know for certain until now. Your father writes to say that you will soon be leaving school. A precautionary measure, he says. May you re-enrol next year? I tell him that of course you may. Yet I have never seen a more healthy, robust-looking girl than you. We have girls at Spencer who spend half the year at home with aches and pains and colds. Yet it is you who have never missed a day who must be sent away to convalesce. And then along comes this business of the letter. Which
you, when you hear that Smallwood has been blamed for it, say you wrote so that Smallwood would be blamed for it. Knowing that, because of your confession, you would be expelled. For you no loss because, although you may not have told your father yet, you have no intention of re-enrolling next year. If you did, you would not have spoken to Headmaster Reeves the way you did the other day, knowing he would repeat your every word to me.”

  “I doubt that he repeated every word.”

  “I dare say you are right. I dare say I am too.”

  “Your version of events neither implicates nor absolves me.”

  “No. That’s true. But you gave yourself away when I made my lucky guess.”

  “I have made my one confession.”

  “Sheilagh. Listen to me. It is not because I intend to tell anyone your secret that I have confronted you. Only to offer you my help and advice. In case you are not entirely satisfied with whatever arrangements your father has made.”

  “I have made my one confession.”

  “Did the father of your child write the letter to the Morning Post? As some sort of prank that got out of hand? Is that it? Is that who you’re really protecting?”

  “Miss Stirling—”

  “Are you in love, Sheilagh?”

  I managed, with a deep breath, to pre-empt what would have been a flood of tears. Again my face was burning.

  “No, Miss Stirling. I am not in love. Nor, I believe, is anyone in love with me. Nor have they ever been.”

  “But you were once in love.”

  “Yes. Once. Only once.”

  “You will fall in love again. And be loved by someone.”

  “I find this—a pointless subject.”

  “Sheilagh, was it by any chance to protect your father that you confessed?”

  “You would not ask if you knew my father.”

  “The letter that he wrote to me. It was very—digressive. In some ways unsettling. As if he might be—having difficulties. With concentration. With—coping. With distinguishing between what was true and what he wished was true.”