A Mind of Winter

by Shira Nayman

  Ma Ling nudged her tea bowl toward the middle of the table, pushing back her chair. “We should be going.”

  We walked back in silence. I knew that something had changed between us, that whatever it is that snaps sometimes between people had snapped.

  The beginnings of dusk floated through the air. We wound back by way of the market, where the farmers and merchants were well advanced in the dismantling of their stalls. A man barked orders to an elderly woman; she reached above her head to unhook the glazed orange ducks, elegant as swans, strung by their necks on a wooden pole. Beside them, a boy stood by a basket of wilted radish tops, calling out the end-of-day price in a shrill child’s voice.

  That night, lying awake in my cot, naked against the thick wet heat, Ma Ling’s flinty eyes came back to me: nubs of condemnation punched from the darkness. Where had I seen that expression before? I remembered another time, sitting beside Ma Ling as she brushed her hair before the cracked glass; seeing the calm of her features reflected in the mirror as she struggled to say—or not say—what she meant, I had felt my own happiness peel away. My patron, Ma Ling had said. To hear her refer to him that way, to see the coyness in her face—and pride! It was then that it came to me, watching the steady brushstrokes that turned Ma Ling’s hair to burnished metal: that innocence is not something you’re born to, it’s something you must construct with the scraps life throws you. A painstaking labor, grain by grain, brick by tiny brick.

  How much of sin could be effaced in this way? What of me? And what of Robert?

  Here I was, witness to Ma Ling’s own fastidious labor—Ma Ling, sitting at her makeshift dressing table, brushing her hair in careful, relentless rhythm.

  Another rhythm. Of course! Ma Ling’s patron was the man of the three-part rhythm on the stairs. I imagined her sitting on the four-poster bed beneath maroon drapings, propped against a mountain of silk pillows and struggling to read aloud from Wordsworth, Jane Austen, George Elliot. Lying beside her, I pictured a man just the other side of youth, handsome and trim, wearing a fine linen shirt and smoking a cigarette. The man’s cane leaned against the bed and, although the injury I fancied he had sustained in the war was not immediately apparent, the aura of the hero hung about him. An incongruous image—not a hundred feet from my own meager room: the two of them luxuriating among pillows reciting the words of the English poets.

  From that time on, when I descended at night to the passageway joining the front of the house to the back, I waited in the airless oblong space with a sense of dread until I heard the sound of croup on the stairs. When it finally came (and some nights this was not until dawn), I slowly made my way back upstairs to my room, which had also changed—no longer a place of respite but a chamber of tense confinement.

  Just as initially the house had welcomed me, its spare tidy rooms offering a new chance of order and peace, now it seemed to be shutting me out. Wherever I went in its rickety confines, I began to feel as if I were intruding, as if my presence were an affront. Even the schoolroom began to feel like a no-man’s-land, cordoned off, a site of potential danger. I kept my duties to a minimum: preparing and conducting my lessons, avoiding going anywhere I was not absolutely required to be. Dining I kept to the barest necessity, on some days appearing only for breakfast, when I would pocket one or two of the white buns that would serve later for my supper.

  And then my late-night wanderings ceased. During those interminable black hours, I now committed myself to the immobile punishment of my room. It bit into me, this loneliness. How distant this room was from my cozy, neat suite at the country school I’d taught in—a hemisphere, a lifetime away: the study, with its chintz-covered couch and antique writing table, and beyond double doors, the sleeping quarters, a pleasing room with gauzy white curtains that fluttered by day, and at night were still before a heavy tar cloth that blocked the light of my reading lamp from the whirring steel enemy prowling the skies.

  There my life had buzzed with purpose, even more so when the girls had begun arriving from war-ravaged London to stay in those relatively safe parts.

  Penelope arrived with the first trainload. I noticed immediately the fraught, dreamy look in her face that signaled a girl with a passion for books. In the classroom, Penelope attended to my words with a mixture of distraction and fervor. One evening in the common room, two weeks after her arrival, she asked nervously if she might show me some verses she’d written. I suggested she visit my rooms during the evening study period.

  In my sitting room, Penelope seemed different: older, more confident. When she finished reading aloud the verses she’d brought—which held the promise of a true poet—the girl seemed curiously indifferent to my response. Why the anxious request in the common room, I wondered, if she had no interest in her teacher’s thoughts? The cool, almost arrogant look on her face as she left came back to me, as if Penelope had set me some kind of challenge that I’d failed. And yet, behind those cool eyes, there had been the shadow of coy pleasure.

  Penelope showed up at my rooms the following Thursday evening and again, the week after that. Without either of us discussing it, this meeting became a routine.

  It was some weeks before I realized just how much I looked forward to those visits, odd as they were. Penelope would arrive, wary and reserved. The moment she began reading, the haughtiness would settle over her. And yet, as the weeks passed, she also seemed more open to my comments, scribbling in the margins of her notebook as I gave my response.

  “I’ve heard you’ll be staying over the summer,” I said at the end of the spring term. Most of the girls were to be billeted to families in the surrounding villages; only a few were to remain at the school, along with a skeleton staff.

  Penelope’s face flashed with irritation; she reached for her notebook and began to read. Everything fell away: the school, my work, the other mistresses and girls. The poem at an end, Penelope looked at me with deep eyes—and there, a smile on her lips, happy and shy. The smile seemed an omen; I felt released from a stricture I’d not until that moment known I was constrained by, and reached for her hand. The girl remained motionless, then turned her head slowly toward me as a startled animal might, an opaque muffled look in her eyes.

  “Penelope,” I said softly. I found myself drawing toward that beautiful, clouded, enigmatic face. But the girl’s lips suddenly twisted; she snatched her hand away. A rustle of papers, a flurry of movement, the click of schoolgirl heels: a blurred expression of disgust. Then the sound of a door opening and closing. Bewildered, I looked around the room. All was as it had been: I was alone.

  A few short weeks and the summer was upon us. All but the five girls boarding for the summer were dispatched to their billets, and the school seemed suddenly large and gracious, alive with the promise of some delightful invitation.

  It was one of those rare days that in any given year the English can count on one hand, when the sun is strong and hot. At breakfast, the girls were in high spirits; I suggested an outing to the lake. The cook packed us a picnic of potted meat, carrots, chalky ration-flour buns, and for dessert, squares of hard dark chocolate. The walk in the heat was marvelous, and I found myself feeling content, humming a melody under my breath as I watched the girls chatting happily up ahead. Even the icy remove Penelope had adopted since our last private meeting failed to unsettle me.

  At the lake, I spread a faded checked tablecloth on the grass and readied lunch while the girls splashed in the water. The heat showed no sign of letting up. How lovely it would be, I thought, gazing out at the shiny white limbs of the girls, to be in a climate where one was always surrounded by syrupy heat, where bright rays layered the world into dappled textures of glow and shade. The girls emerged from the water, shaking droplets from their hair and skin as they ran up the bank. Penelope wrapped herself in her towel, the others preferring to dry themselves in the sun.

  After lunch, the girls slipped on their tunics, put on socks and shoes, gathered up their belongings. On the long walk back, they sang ro
unds. Once we reached the school grounds, they dropped their satchels and raced to the bathhouse to rinse off. I climbed the driveway at my own slower pace, deposited the picnic basket at the kitchen door, and then doubled back to the bathhouse. By the time I got there, the girls were stripped down, standing above the long metal trough, their backs to the door where I stood, lathering themselves with bars of rough yellow soap. It was cool within the barnlike structure, and I imagined their shoulders and arms to be covered with goose bumps. One girl reached down to the faucet, cupped a handful of water, and, giggling, splashed the face of the girl beside her. Soon all five were spraying each other, gasping with fun. I stood silently behind them, watching the fluid and unself-conscious grace of their movements.

  When one girl twisted around in her play, she caught sight of me at the half-open door and turned fully to face me. Immediately, the others turned too. I found myself confronted by five naked, shivering, suddenly quiet girls, their hair dripping onto their shoulders. Unthinkingly, I sought out Penelope and again, unthinkingly, lowered my eyes and found my gaze fixed on the girl’s well-developed bosom. The girls seemed to be waiting for me to say something, to explain my presence.

  I cleared my throat and began, awkwardly, “When you’re ready, girls …” There was a pause, an endless ringing, and then I retrieved my will, forced my gaze back up to the level of the girls’ faces in time to see a look of dark despisement in Penelope’s eyes.

  “When you’re ready, cook has tea for you in the common room.” I turned and walked from the outhouse, aware of the stony silence that continued to fill the vast draughty room behind me.

  When I got back to my room, I drafted a letter of resignation. There would be no reconciliation. I knew that Penelope would not again appear at my door on Thursday or any other afternoon. It was three weeks to the day that I had made my disastrous speech to the assembled school, not truly the reason for my departure, as I had presented it to Ma Ling, though an important moment in the souring. It was only after the trip to the lake, after that deathly still moment in the doorway of the outhouse, that I knew my long years of devotion to the students at the school had come to an end.

  I did not leave, however, with a sense of despair, nor did I feel anything but gratitude toward Penelope. She had shown me that my heart was not barren; it was with Penelope that I had experienced the first real stirrings of love.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Icounted the minutes to my next pipe. Seventy-three. I concentrated on the small face of the clock I wore on a chain around my neck, watching the second hand make its way round and round the dial. Round and round the merry-go-round, I said softy to myself. Round and round we go.

  A knock sounded at the door. I looked up. The door opened a crack, and one wide polished shoe slunk sluglike into view.

  Han Shu’s voice was a blast of molasses: “My dear, allow me an audience.” His ample body followed. “I’ve brought you your pipe.” He strode toward me, swinging the pipe before him as if it were some kind of divining rod he was using to determine my mood. When he reached the cot he leaned down, close enough so that his breath blew damply into my face.

  “Don’t worry,” he said thickly. “You will get your four o’clock pipe as well. Consider this a gift.”

  I took the pipe and waited for Han Shu to prepare the pellet over the small lamp and then, when it was oozy and puffy, place it over the hole in the stem of the pipe. Slowly, I inhaled.

  “Word has spread apparently about Ma Ling,” he said, giving an odd little flourish of his hand. “We are on the cusp of a new era. An era of powerful reputation. We might, in fact, start a little specialization. Private girls, so to speak. There are certainly more than a few exclusive men like Mr.—like Ma Ling’s gentleman—who prefer the use of a girl who is, well, limited to them.”

  Han Shu seemed for a moment to be chewing some pleasing morsel in his mouth. “I imagine they might like to train them too, to their own predilections.” He paused. “Let me come to the point. I must ask you, Christine, to return to that most important of all duties which you have, if you don’t mind me remarking, let slip.”

  I inhaled again and watched as the burned little lump of opium shriveled to almost nothing.

  “It’s imperative. I’d never thought it possible—people here left and right, selling up and leaving in droves. Even Victor Sassoon! I’ve heard he has plans to remove to some island in the Caribbean. They’re driving away my friends, my comrades—my clientele! Han Shu’s Bar is threatened … after surviving so much …” He placed his hand over his heart, his brow tensed, his dark eyes wide and glistening.

  “Manor House is our only future, I see that now. Christine, I must exhort you. We need more girls. I cannot make this more plain. And soon. It’s every bit as much your future as mine, my dear. Would you permit me to remind you of that?”

  Han Shu was stroking my hand; his expression of pleading was not one I’d seen before in his face.

  “Stick to the street children, of course,” he continued. “A mother catching wind of her daughter’s success might suddenly develop an inconvenient bout of maternal devotion.” He pulled back his lips in what I had learned was supposed to be jocularity, but which gave the impression of a donkey preparing to bray.

  “Consider it your contribution to our joint endeavor. I mean it, Christine. With your talents and my business sense—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’d recommend an evening stroll, my dear. Tonight. Inland, where you had such luck finding Ma Ling. The pickings might be quite …” Han Shu paused, a man preparing to draw his trump card. “Salubrious. Yes! Salubrious!” He turned and left the room.

  “You will tell me if I’m chewing your ear off, won’t you?” Archibald began as Barnaby planted himself in his usual chair.

  “Strange words to pass your lips,” said Barnaby.

  “I know I’m a bit of a scoundrel, but I’m terribly troubled all the same, right at this moment.”

  Barnaby glanced at his watch. He had tried to take Archibald’s advice—to put Christine out of his mind, to wait until she resurfaced, until she was ready to seek him out. It had been much harder than he could have imagined; the strain of it was wearing him down.

  “I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Archibald was saying uncertainly.

  “I’m not meeting the others until ten,” Barnaby replied, trying to be gracious, though seeing the inflamed look on Archibald’s face made him wish he could leave. He ordered a drink and sat back in his chair.

  These meetings with Archibald had been a welcome distraction for Barnaby, but he was beginning to tire of his friend’s sordid eccentricities. Perhaps, he found himself thinking, it was time to return home, to reclaim his life on American soil.

  “Here’s the point,” Archibald said. “A question, really, that I would put to you. Have you ever smelled a mixture of hot-buttered crumpets and honeysuckle? Picture it, Barnaby, a room in a comfortable boarding house overlooking the hills of the Lake District. Honeysuckle spills from the window boxes, the air coming in at the window is fresh as apples. A maid in a bonnet—no more than a child, really—brings tea and crumpets to your room on a tray. Your senses are reeling, her red cheeks glow. A knob of butter shines on her finger; she’s mortified! Her eyelashes flutter, poor dear, you think she might burst into tears. You want to take her into your arms and comfort her. That buttery odor makes your mouth water, the honeysuckle sends you into a swoon; those plump arms, that tender look of remorse on the child’s face—all make you feel you have clumsily stumbled upon heaven. I’m sorry, sir, it was an accident, she whispers. Come here, my sweet, you say, and you know by the throaty sound of your voice and the look on the child’s face that you have scared her half to death. So you slip your finger into the middle of the soft crumpet, like Tom Thumb poking about for his plum, and you pull up a lovely warm gobbit of butter and lick it right off. To show the girl that her buttery finger has not upset you in the least. You laugh and hope she will too but there’s terror i
n her face. She’s staring at you as if you’re the big bad wolf—it makes you sad. You see, more than anything, at that moment you want her company. All those tantalizing fragrances! You spoon some blackberry jam onto the crumpet; you must take a bite, you want to detain her, you try to do both at the same time. An embarrassment of riches: a mouthful of crumpet, the warm sweet jam and melted butter fresh from the farm, and a frightened little beauty by your side, plump as a suckling.

  “And how old are you, my precious? you say, trying to sound kind. Thirteen and a half, sir, she replies. You are surprised; she looks younger. Well, not to worry, you say, meaning to put her mind at rest about the buttery finger. Come over here, let me pat your arm. She takes a few frightened steps toward you and you pat her plump shoulder. How your fingers ache to caress her! How you long to breathe in the child’s odor from her hair and skin.

  “But here’s the problem; you know it as well as the sound of your own name. This is England! There’s a funny look in her face now, piteous, confused, and you realize it is because there are tears streaming from your eyes. My sweet, you say, no longer the big bad wolf, just a pitiful fat old man.”

  Archibald wiped away a tear. “You spend a good minute or two trying to refrain but you cannot stop yourself, and you let your hand slip to her rump, and you stroke her there a few times, firmly enough to get a sense of her dear shape. The fear is back in her face, and that makes it all the more delicious, and you let your hand linger. Your fingers are aching, how dearly you’d love to … But no. England, you say to yourself, Almighty England, and you go back to patting the child’s arm.

  “Thank you, my dear, you say innocently enough, for the tea, and she takes that to mean she may go, which she does, and you are left alone with your grief.”

  Barnaby pushed his drink away. He was used to Archibald’s waywardness—he had depended on it, in fact, for amusement—and had come over time to admire his friend, in some peculiar, roundabout way. But, for the first time, he found himself feeling frankly disgusted by him. Could it be, he wondered, that all this was not bravado, the tawdry musings of a man staring down old age? Could it be that Archibald was, in fact, truly a pedophile?