Confession
Page 22
‘This is the last time I shall do this. And this. And this. This is the last time I shall walk along such and such a street, eat in this Refectory, sit in this classroom, descend this staircase, talk with my teacher – ’
Monsieur Heger found me standing by the window in the classroom, just as I knew he would. When I heard the door opening I did not even turn around. He came and stood by my side and together we looked out at the snow which glistened as if possessed of an interior light.
‘You are ready to go back?’ he said.
‘My trunk is packed, my passage booked – ’
‘I didn’t mean – ’
‘I know what you meant – ’
A moment’s silence during which I could feel a pain growing inside me, the intensity of which made it almost impossible to breathe.
‘I want you to take this,’ Monsieur Heger handed me a foolscap piece of paper. It was a diploma – written in his own hand - testifying to my qualifications as a teacher and sealed with the official seal of the Athenée Royal.
‘I don’t know what to say – ’ my voice was hoarse.
‘I hope it will be of some help to you when you set up your own school. My wife tells me that you might be prepared to take on one of our daughters as a pupil there in the future?’ he added referring to a brief exchange I had had with Madame Heger earlier that morning when she had informed me that she would be accompanying me to Ostend.
I told her there was no need. The journey would be exhausting. She should not tire herself out on my account. Besides surely she would prefer to spend time with her children. But Madame insisted, saying that it was inappropriate for a woman to travel alone.
‘But you will be alone on the return journey,’ I protested.
‘But I am a married woman. There lies the difference.’
There indeed!
She would be my jailer, that is what she was saying to me and in no uncertain terms. She would be my jailer until she had escorted me safely on board the boat. Suddenly the keys she kept around her waist took on a sinister aspect.
Back in the schoolroom Monsieur Heger asked me to remember him to Emily.
‘Your sister will be pleased to have you at home again,’ he said with a robustness that might have fooled others, but did not fool me – ‘you can go walking together up on those moors you are always talking about - ’
‘Do I? ’ I said anxiously. ‘Always talk about them?’
‘You are worth listening to – ’
‘Monsieur – ’
‘What?’
Up above us the moon slipped behind a cloud and the view outside the window, which before had looked so otherworldly, so queerly beautiful, now turned a dull, shadowy black.
The bells of Ste Gudule struck seven.
At this hour, in this house, eighteen months previously I had walked out of this room only to bump into Monsieur Heger in the corridor. Back then he had spoken to me just as he was now – plainly, disinterestedly and yet how much had changed over the intervening months, how much had happened to make this, our last conversation, so painful.
‘Promise me something - ’ I said.
‘If it is in my power – ’
‘Tell me what I want to hear.’
For a few brief seconds my teacher looked confused then holding my gaze so steadily it seemed as if Time stood still, he leant forward towards me.
*
Once, on a rainy evening when I first came to the Pensionat I had watched from behind a curtain as some of the younger girls used their fingertips to draw upon a misted windowpane in the main dormitory – they drew love hearts shot through with arrows and underneath they wrote names and dates encircled by flowers. The drawings had shimmered wetly in the hazy glow of the oil lamps until one by one the hearts and flowers began to dissolve.
On 2nd January 1844 my ship left Ostend on the early morning tide. I stood on deck watching as the coastline diminished until finally all that was left was a thin silver line hovering on the horizon then afterwards nothing. What had gone before was now firmly in the past while all that remained of the present was a salt-scoured seascape, a wide vista of everlasting grey, a slow journey back to where I, Charlotte Brontë, had begun.
Closing my eyes I listened as the gulls keened and screamed overhead.
Partings are not sorrowful, that is what – over the years – I have come to believe. They are inevitable. People die, loved ones perish, friends depart. There is clearly an end to everything. But what happens in between the time a woman steps off a boat in one country then two years later steps back onto it again to sail home, that is less clear. That is a matter of shadows and starlight, of unseen exchanges, unobserved glances, unspoken words.
When Monsieur Heger said good-bye to me on that last day in December my conviction was I would see him again although deep down in my heart I knew this not to be true.
The moon slipped behind a cloud.
The bells of Ste Gudule struck seven.
Monsieur looked confused then, holding my gaze so steadily that it seemed as if Time stood still, he leant forward towards me and whispered his last words into my ear.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When Charlotte Brontë wrote what was to be her last novel, Villette, she drew for inspiration on the time she had spent in Brussels at the Pensionat Heger. In turn I am indebted to Charlotte Brontë for Villette upon which parts of this novel are based. I have also quoted from Charlotte Brontë’s letters, alongside the essays she wrote for Monsieur Heger whilst in Brussels.
FOOTNOTES
1. Quoted in The Secret of Charlotte Bronte Followed by Some Remininscences of the Real Monsieur and Madame Heger, Frederika Macdonald. London: TC and EC. Jack, 1914
2. Quote taken from Paradise Lost, John Milton
3. Apocrypha – Bible
4. Psalms 16:11
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barker, Juliet., The Brontës, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1994)
Gordon, Lyndall., Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (Virago 2008)
Lonoff, Sue (Ed)., The Belgian Essays, (Yale University Press, 1996)
Ingham, Patricia., The Brontës – Authors in Context, (Oxford University Press 2006)
Smith, Margaret (Ed)., Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë (Oxford University Press 2007)
Smith, Margaret (Ed)., The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume One 1829-1847 (Oxford University Press 2005)
Spark, Muriel., The Essence of the Brontës, (Peter Owen 1993)
Gerin, Winifred, Charlotte Bronte: A Life, (Oxford Paperbacks 1969)