Catherine's Heart

by Lawana Blackwell

  “But you have a mirror.”

  “I don’t exactly hover over it like Snow White’s stepmother. My mother did once say she liked the color of my hair. But it’s not half as magnificent as yours, Peggy. Why, it turns so many lovely shades in the sunlight.”

  Peggy gave her a grateful smile, even as she shook her head. “The whole is equal to the sum of its parts, remember?”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “You have more becoming parts.” She touched one of the curls at her own temple, already sprung loose from its chignon. “I only have magnificent hair.”

  When Catherine opened her mouth to protest, Peggy raised a halting hand. “And a natural talent for Latin, which will do you no good if you don’t finish conjugating verbs.”

  ****

  On Friday evening at eight, Catherine attended the first meeting of the Lawn Tennis Club in one of the lecture rooms.

  “Weather permitting, we will play doubles every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after lunch,” said the elected chairwoman, third-year student Susan Martin, to the eleven students present. “In inclement weather we’ll conduct serving and backhand drills in the gymnasium. We’ll need every bit of practice we can squeeze in before the tournament against Newnham in May.”

  It’s only every other day, Catherine rehearsed mentally on the way down the corridor. Surely Peggy would easily find someone else with whom to spend those alternating afternoon exercise breaks.

  “It’ll be good for both of us to cultivate closer friendships with the other girls,” Catherine could hear herself explaining ever so gently, as her mind pictured the two of them in Peggy’s sitting room.

  Peggy bit her lip. “But I’m afraid you’ll decide you’d rather be with them than me.”

  “Never,” Catherine said, patting her shoulder. “You’re my best friend here. Nothing will change that.”

  The scene was still taking place on her mind’s stage when she reached Peggy’s door. She did not hear the voices inside the apartment until after she had knocked.

  “Why, I was just down at your door a minute ago,” Peggy said with traces of white sugar on the side of her mouth. “Eileen brought over the most marvelous lemon biscuits. You must join us.”

  “Thank you, but there were refreshments at the mee—”

  “Then come in for a chat.”

  Against her better inclination, for she felt very much an intruder, Catherine allowed herself to be persuaded inside. The three other freshers who were in the Chamber Orchestra were seated around the study table—Ann Purdy from Birmingham; Helene Coates, at twenty the oldest first-year student; and Eileen Stocker, who wore wire spectacles and was a niece of Miss Welsh. After practically pushing Catherine into the only empty chair at the study table, Peggy dragged her upholstered chair close.

  “Peggy has had us in stitches,” Helene caroled, passing the plate of biscuits toward Catherine. “Telling us about those cheeky St. John’s men on the train.”

  “I would pay a pound to have seen ‘Gloucester’s’ face when he caught the hat,” Ann said. She was a thin young woman, not much taller than Jewel, with dimples in each pale cheek.

  Though she politely declined a biscuit, Catherine laughed along with the others. She didn’t mind Peggy’s retelling the incident—in fact she had written all about it in her first letter to her parents.

  “We’ve discovered that we all began music lessons at the age of six,” said Eileen from the head of the table. “There must be some sort of musical awakening at that age.”

  “Not in my case,” said Ann. “A doctor told my parents that taking up the flute would strengthen my lungs. I wasn’t interested at all in those days and had to be forced to practice.”

  “She has asthma,” Helene explained to Catherine.

  Ann nodded and held up a red tin with Gee’s Lobelline Lozenges captioned in white letters on a blue background. “I carry these everywhere.”

  “Does the flute help?” Catherine asked her.

  “Quite so. Did you know that it takes more breath power to play the flute than the tuba?”

  “Fortunate for you,” Peggy said. “You’re not much bigger than a tuba yourself.”

  That led to more talk having to do with music and instruments, and so when she felt able to do so without offending, Catherine rose and excused herself. “I’ve some letters to write,” she explained, truthfully.

  They all bade her good-evening, Peggy even rising to see her the few feet to the door. “You’ll tell me all about the Tennis Club in the morning, won’t you?” her friend said, freckled face glowing from the warmth of shared hospitality.

  “I will,” Catherine promised. An odd little pang struck her while she walked alone down the corridor. You were going to suggest that you both make other friends, she reminded herself. She just hadn’t expected Peggy to do so before she gave her little speech, and in such great quantity at once.

  But she felt much better when she touched her doorknob and felt definite traces of sugar.

  After changing into nightgown and dressing gown she sat at her table and wrote a three-page letter to her parents and Jewel, another letter to her relatives at Berkeley Square, and a third to Aunt Phyllis. She read in bed from the translated Latin lines in her notebook for an hour or so, until her eyes grew weary. Turning off her lamp, she lay on her left side, shoved the pillow under her neck, and pulled the covers around her shoulder. Her thoughts grew less and less crisp, blurring together as the words had begun blurring on the page. She dreamt of lawn tennis matches, the ball thumping against one racket, then an opposite one, back and forth; until her thoughts sharpened enough to discern that she was hearing knocking on the wall at the head of her bed.

  They came again, a series of five knocks, a pause, and five more. She raised herself on an elbow, reached over her headboard, and knocked back five times.

  The knocking came again, this time more rapidly. Pushing back the covers, she lit a candle and slipped on her dressing gown and slippers. Goose bumps crawled up her back in the dark corridor. She paused at Millicent’s bedroom door to consider whether she should fetch one of the resident lecturers first. But what if she is choking, she asked herself, or seriously ill?

  “Millicent?” she said, walking into the bedroom with candle aloft. The ungracious thought struck her that she was probably the first student to enter this apartment since its current lodger moved in.

  “Is that you, Catherine?” came a small muffled voice.

  “It is.” All Catherine could see of Millicent above the covers was her forehead and wide eyes. “Shall I fetch Miss Scott?”

  “No . . . please.” Easing down the covers so that her face was visible in the amber light, she said, “Will you come closer?”

  “Of course.” Catherine moved on over to the side of the bed. “What’s the matter? Did you have a nightmare?”

  “Yes,” the girl said thickly, then whispered, “It was so real.”

  “Well, it’s over now, isn’t it?” Catherine said, lifting the globe to the lamp on the bedside table. “You know now it was just a dream.”

  “Not over yet. I still feel sick inside from it.”

  Catherine lit the wick with the candle and replaced the globe, then set the candlestand upon the table. “Is that better?”

  “Yes.” Millicent’s indigo eyes drank in the light. “Thank you.”

  “Do you have them often?”

  “Yes. But this is my first one here.”

  Catherine wasn’t sure what to do next, until she recalled how her own mother had handled her childhood nightmares. “Why don’t you tell it to me?”

  “I couldn’t,” Millicent said with a visible shudder.

  “Very well.” Reaching for the lamp, Catherine said, “I’ll put this on your study table, so there’s no danger of fire, and leave the door—”

  A hand shot out from the covers and grabbed her sleeve. “Do you think that would help? Telling you?”

  “Yes.” Catherine straightened.
“It’s what my mother always had us do. She says if you bring your fears out into the light—”

  “Your mother . . .” A sob broke her voice. “If only mine were still alive!”

  There was no time to wonder what her own mother would do. Catherine hefted herself on the side of the bed and put a hand upon Millicent’s shoulder. “There, there now,” she soothed. “Cry it out.”

  Cry she did, pressing the bedsheet to her eyes. When the sobs died down to rasping breaths, Catherine rose to pour water from a carafe into a glass beaker. Millicent had to sit higher upon her pillows to drink.

  “Thank you,” she said, wiping her mouth as she handed over the empty mug.

  “More?”

  When she shook her head, Catherine put the beaker on the table and sat again on the side of the bed. She was leery of asking bereaved people about lost loved ones, under the assumption that it would cause a person to remember that loss and become sad. But Millicent’s late mother was clearly heavy in her thoughts this evening. Cautiously she asked, “How did your mother pass on?”

  “A tumor in her breast,” Millicent replied. The indigo of her eyes was all the more striking because of the redness rimming them. “The best surgeon in Huntingdon attended her, but she lived only weeks after that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Millicent blinked, nodded, and wiped her eyes. “Do you know where St. Ives is?”

  From the poem? Catherine wondered. She had skipped rope to it countless times as a girl.

  As I was going to St. Ives

  I met a man with seven wives . . .

  But she could not ask for fear of sounding flippant in the wake of Millicent’s sad news. Instead, she said, “I wasn’t sure if there was really such a place.”

  “It’s where we live—only fifteen miles northwest of here and a stone’s throw from Huntingdon. My father founded a newspaper, The Huntingdon Mercury. He married our neighbor’s cousin in April. Her name is . . . was . . . Evelyn Singers.” She drew another breath. “She’s only seven years older than I. They honeymooned on the Continent for six weeks, but Father spends most of his time in Huntingdon anyway, so our lives went on about the same.”

  “Our lives?”

  “Constance, Harriet, and Justin—my two younger sisters and brother. Only we address Constance as Connie. They call me Milly.”

  She swallowed audibly and continued. “But when Father and . . . his wife returned, she declared that our education was lacking and our lack of discipline appalling. And so she persuaded Father to enroll the girls in Cheltenham—even though there is a day school in Huntingdon. They sent Justin to Rugby, with us begging them not to, for he has a stammer and the other boys will make sport of him. They even sent away our governess, Miss Pierce. After her being with us since I was seven!”

  It was a horrific story to Catherine’s ears, worse than any bad dream. At least one eventually woke up from a dream. “And so you didn’t want to come here.”

  Millicent drew a breath. “I actually took the examinations in the spring with that in mind. It seemed a grand adventure, and home would stay the same. Now all I can think about are my sisters and brother, how wretched they must feel.”

  She gave Catherine an earnest look. “I would never knowingly cause a child to be unhappy. Evelyn is what she is, but our own father? How can he live with himself?”

  “What will you do?” Catherine asked.

  Millicent pulled up her knees under the covers and wrapped her arms around them. “I don’t know. My first plan was to lay about idle and skip lectures so I’d be sent down at the end of term. I even threatened that when they brought me here. But to what end?” The red-rimmed eyes narrowed. “Evelyn isn’t going to put up with my being about, and I certainly don’t wish for her company. Besides, it wouldn’t be the same without the others. So I rise every day and go through the motions, wishing I were dead.”

  “Don’t say that, Millicent.”

  “Why? What difference would it make to you?”

  Catherine had to search her mind for an honest reply. In good conscience she could not gush over how fond she was of Millicent. “I would miss seeing your beautiful hair.”

  “My hair.”

  It was a weak lob, Catherine told herself, but now that it was in motion she had to play it. “It’s like looking at a painting, especially when you take it down in the evenings.”

  The tiniest hint of a smile curled Millicent’s lips. “It’s kind of you to say that. Especially after I’ve behaved so badly toward you.”

  Catherine shrugged. “All in the past.”

  “It’s even kinder of you to say that.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  She sighed. “I’ll never be so until my family’s all right. But I suppose bearing a grudge against the whole world isn’t going to make that happen.”

  “I should think it would make the term seem even longer,” Catherine told her. “At least being involved with people makes the time pass more quickly.”

  “Hmm. I never thought of it that way.”

  An idea popped into Catherine’s head. “Do you play tennis? It’s probably not too late to join the club.”

  “We have a court at home.” Millicent mulled over it for another second. “Perhaps I shall. May I tell you the nightmare now? I think you’re right—I should speak of it.”

  “But of course.”

  “A monster was after me, and I couldn’t run fast enough. My feet felt like lead and my scream wouldn’t leave my throat.”

  “A monster?”

  “Yes. Like Doctor Frankenstein’s monster.”

  It was almost winsome, hearing an eighteen-year-old speak so. Monsters had not visited any of Catherine’s infrequent nightmares since she was a small girl. As she grew older they were replaced by more definite threatening forms—wild dogs, mad people, snakes.

  “You know, it seems almost funny now,” Millicent said, rubbing her eyes.

  “At least he didn’t catch you,” Catherine told her. “Perhaps his feet felt like lead too.”

  That made her smile. “It was so good of you to come. But you must be terribly sleepy.”

  “That’s all right,” Catherine said, covering a sudden yawn.

  Millicent covered one as well. “I think I can sleep now.”

  “Very good.” Motioning for her to lie back down, Catherine tucked the covers about her shoulders. She then smoothed Millicent’s forehead with her fingertips. “May you have pleasant dreams for the rest of the night.”

  “Mmm. Thank you. No one’s done that since Mother.”

  “What shall I do about the lamp?”

  “You can extinguish it.” Millicent smiled again. “Now that I know you’re just a knock away.”

  “Very good.” Catherine took up her candle, extinguished the lamp, and walked back to her room. On impulse she went into her sitting room where the letters she had written earlier lay, yet unsealed, on the table. She sat, opened her jar of ink, and in the candlelight added a postscript to one. Thank you for being the kind of parents you are.

  ****

  At breakfast the flow of conversation at the table shared by Catherine, Peggy, Helene Coates from the Chamber Music Society, and Jane Stretten of the Tennis Club was hampered by Eileen Stocker’s reading aloud from her notebook:

  “. . . they are also known as preganglionic fibers of the sympathetic system; the axons of others pass into the anterior and lateral funiculi, where they—”

  “Please, Eileen,” Helene interrupted. “Not at the table.”

  Eileen raised bespectacled eyes from her notes on Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body. “You shouldn’t be so concerned over having your delicate sensibilities offended, Helene. You know Mr. Foster will ask about this.”

  Professor Foster, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. from Trinity College, indeed was reputed to be the most thorough lecturer at Girton, even among those who, like Catherine and Jane, did not attend lectures in Physiology.

  “It’s not m
y delicate sensibilities that are offended,” Helene argued, “but the universal notion of common courtesy. Meals are reserved for pleasant conversation, not frantic last-minute study. Remember?”

  “Very well.” Eileen sighed, setting her notes aside to send a forkful of buttered eggs to her mouth. Her brows raised over her spectacles. “Mmm . . . these are good.”

  The others laughed, for half of the eggs on her plate had already been consumed while her mind was preoccupied.

  “Lateral funiculi?” Jane pursed her lips in thought. Thickly proportioned, she had a powerful backhand upon the tennis court. “That reminds me of a song. What are they, pray tell?”

  “Don’t get her started again,” Peggy groaned.

  “Nerve fibers,” Eileen replied after another forkful of eggs.

  “Surely the song’s not about nerve fibers!”

  “What song?” Catherine asked.

  “The Italian one. I heard an organ grinder singing it last May Day. I’m not sure of all the words.” Jane cleared her throat, sang softly, “La-la-la-la-la . . . Funicu-li, Funicu-la.”

  “It’s about fun and frolic and music,” came a voice from above. “It translates into ‘Joy is everywhere, funiculi, funicula.’ ”

  Everyone looked up. Peggy and Helene twisted in their chairs. Millicent stood with plate and cup in hand, hair tied with a ribbon at the nape of her neck, and shadows beneath her indigo eyes. She wrinkled her nose. “Only . . . I’m not sure of the translation for those last two words. I suspect they’re just nonsense, like abracadabra or jabberwocky.”

  Still gaping, Jane nodded. “Uh, thank you.”

  Four students at the next table had quieted to stare. Millicent glanced at them, then explained, “Our former governess was proficient in Italian.”

  Rousing to her senses, Catherine motioned toward an empty chair. “Will you join us, Millicent?” She had to smile at the curious look Peggy sent her, for they had not yet had opportunity to speak privately this morning.

  Her admiration for her friend multiplied when Peggy turned again to the newcomer and said, “Yes, Millicent. Do join us.”

  “Thank you.” Millicent put down her dish and cup to pull out the chair. Unfolding her napkin, she said, “The bacon looks good, doesn’t it?”