Schooling

by Heather McGowan

  Orange squash, penguins, hard rolls. She goes to Spenning, right in his ear, Going to the lav, Mr. Spenning. Lav. Who says Lav. Waiting at the far end of his fourth form carriage. Palms flat against the metal, bottom against her hands, she watches him come to her. His hip catches on a seat, an embarrassed smile, up the aisle to her, hand over hand, light flashing on his face and off again as he passes windows, making his way to her for she has news she has to tell him and tell him now, Father said Yes.

  On the platform BATH. Betts with his list and hair, the kerfuffle of it. Striking coach drivers have spoiled everything and who if not he will see to it that no one’s limbs get amputated via train, veering toward apoplexy when Gilbert and Devon’s fourth form group mingle with his third formers hissing, Mr. Gilbert sir if you would just Give A Hand, because Gilbert is showing Simon Puck his trick with a coin.

  You can’t blame her for not writing anymore . . . Sophie catches up . . . Your friend. In America.

  Isabelle? . . . below them, Bath spreads, clammy and white. Who said anything about it.

  Three thousand miles, Catrine. It’s like dying.

  We were never really friends.

  You were. You had her letters. Last term. I saw them.

  But there have been no letters from Isabelle. Biro-trenched onion-skin. Carefree divots. No blue sails have arrived for her at Monstead. No untidy pages bearing those hurdles, the American r. Flagged pinkie over cream tea, Catrine? Pinafores? A Governess? Latin?

  Georgian . . . Spenning has them puffing up a hill toward the main square. At the back, Bringing Up the Rear, Mr. Spenning, Betts entertains with a story about a monk who fell in love with a swan and jumped into the river though that was a rare sort of occurrence even in the twelfth century.

  Thank you, Mr. Betts. The river you are currently passing over harbors an unusual breed of and Brickie next to her saying Araigny’s finger was cut off by a nazi when she was four.

  That’s horrible.

  Well there are horrible things.

  And apropos of nothing, certainly not nazis, she laughs. They are fueled by freedom, the twenty-six of them, outside school they are ordinary human beings reveling in company. Chosen company. She has invited Brickie, Simon Puck, Sophie and Ness to join her for a tour in the country. And driving down in headscarves and mittens, wicker basket on the backseat, they toast each other and the paucity of traffic, spouting little stories that end with a joke or someone made to appear foolish or, in her case, trailing off into silence as the original reason for the story suddenly proves elusive. Giddy with the idea of an outside world, of beings not limited to eleven through seventeen, but inhabited by small creatures, midgets, well infants they call them, and wily pensioners, jaws clicking as they maul the biscuits. Spenning’s paleolithic spurts will not moor them. For they have emerged blinking into a world not Chittock Leigh, not half-day Wednesday when half the town shuts up. But a workweek, a real town, almost a city actually. Caught up. Carried away. Impulsive. One of them will act outside the domain Pupil. A noble act for another, a decent one for his friend. Yes, they will treat and be treated as citizens.

  Abruptly, she stops. Someone smacks into her. She steps aside and Simon Puck shoots past, undenting his beak, scowling.

  Tell me, Brickie, what you have on me. I know it’s about our fathers, when they were boys at Monstead.

  You don’t have the courage to hear it.

  I do. I have done things. Survived things.

  There’s blood involved.

  What’s blood to me? Nothing. I’ve seen blood, houses laid waste. Tell me.

  I’ll think about it . . . Brickie in a fine turn. He tears down the hill, catching up to the Dodo.

  The Ambassador at twelve or fifteen, hurling cutlery at the scholarship boys. Miniature Father at nine, eleven. There were photographs, Mother brought them out when he was away. In Wales, standing behind his father’s house, shovel in one hand. His mother had already sailed for America. Not so long afterwards he was at Monstead and the Ambassador was teasing him with fat fingers saying I’ve got something on you and. Father being led up a hill by his mother was another. Mother taking her fingernail to get the pages apart. That’s why your father chose me, I reminded him of his mother, though no man wants to think that. Mildewed album. Yes, it was my accent he fell for.

  Cry of a gull. Down the riverbank, fourth formers sketch the river house. Devon circulates, arms crossed. Her voice trailing up, You’re really moving towards something. The lurid color is Fi Hammond in her illegal jumper really moving. From her vantage she can see Gilbert. Gilbert taking Fi’s sketchbook, Gilbert leaning down, kissing Fi on the mouth. Putting one hand on a yellow shoulder.

  Waiting for the loo are you? Yes, her hands cold against the metal. Will you enjoy Bath and he put his hands in his pockets and swayed with the rhythm of the train as if he too waited for the loo although as far as she knew neither of them had checked to see if the latch read vacant or occupied. Have you been avoiding me but as he said it he looked up the train toward the third form compartment toward Betts so it was clear who was avoiding whom. No, I’m not, I’m not avoiding you. Patchy hands cold against the metal wall. I spoke with my father last night, he’s sending the permission slip. Gilbert looked puzzled. The door swung open, a boy came out. Go and sit down, Gilbert said for no reason. What do you mean permission? Posting it, his signature, the check, so I can go to France. Oh, he said, That’s wonderful news.

  They will have sufficient vocabulary, nine fingers will ensure it. On down the riverbank taking out notebooks, brown for geography. Dirt clods sellotaped to a page, a flowering grass found in Chittock Leigh, stages of sediment, contours, cross section of a rock. A fresh page for flint, for Bath.

  Over a bridge. The town whitewashed, the smell of ocean. Seaside. Four buildings form a square. A man in the doorway of dry-cleaning presses two fingers to his temple. Baskets of colored eggs in the windows, streamers. A year, a year Easter day. Her pen has bled, the taste of ink. Never get through a day without blue somewhere, blouse, arms. She is wasting away they said and it was a waste. The smell of car fumes, gasoline. Dr. Thorpe talking about carriages. On his pause for breath, Spenning quickly interjects a note on mesolithic hunters. When Mother was wheeled into the library on a cot, Father put away the photographs for good. They are sentimental. But he didn’t know she kept the vintage letters, Dear Catherine Dear Henry. They think you will die from the pain of it. Or is it you who thought that. If it were something you could refuse. Thank you, no.

  Vanessa holds out a can of Lilt. The group behind her, their straggled height of hair, brown, yellow, black. Brickie, Joyce. The treeline in the square, the roofs. This town a hospital all white and straight as a sheet. Drinking down the effervescence the pineapple sweetness a remedy.

  A day by the ocean when Isabelle told her they wouldn’t be girls again. Smelled like this. Like salt. Tasted of salt.

  You’ll go back, I expect . . . Nessa reaches for the drink.

  Their fingers overlap. No, Ness, there’s nothing for me in America.

  Sophie appears slapping a rolled-up magazine into her palm, What’d I miss, shoving it between her knees to take Nessa’s notebook.

  And they move on. All so fraught one moment, the next nothing. Deflated, then expectant. The excitement of possibilities, of accidents and fortune, alternate and collide, drumming a pulse above her ear. Through the streets. They could rebel.

  In the park, Spenning passes out lunches, the sun crawls out. Figures on the Lawn. Gilbert on a Bench, lunch beside him, face raised to the blank sky. Even those few minutes in the hot corridor he kept glancing over her shoulder to sight Mr. Betts.

  A tap. Simon Puck alerting her to a spot where the grey balds in her knee. Sophie is dismantling her sandwich, revealing its sordid inlay. Butter webbed to cheese.

  Sophie, stop . . . Nessa, easily disgusted . . . It’s like open heart surgery.

  Brickie shifts, picks up his leaning hand, looks at it. Buttercup pre
ssed to his palm. Immersed, black hair a curtain, sandwich balanced on his knee.

  Suddenly, a packed lunch lands on the grass between them. Betts, pulling off his jacket.

  So you are to be our hero, Brickman. Congratulations.

  Nessa and Sophie stare . . . Brickie?

  He’s peeling the flower off his palm.

  And how are you finding Mr. Percival’s direction? I had the opportunity to stop by your last rehearsal. Your director is certainly taking a number of liberties with the translation. Aristophanes must be a dervish in his grave . . . Betts pours a cup of dark syrup from his thermos . . . I was asked to operate the machine but I’m already engaged in some theatrics. I’d prefer a lighter role, still . . . Betts knocks back the coffee . . . What do you think, Brickman, are we victims of vanity? This thirst for applause, is it only ego gratification or is there more to it?

  Peaks couldn’t remember his lines, sir and Owen Wharton threatened me—

  Could it be that our own lives offer so few opportunities for noble action?

  She stands, brushing grass from her skirt.

  Betts squints up to place her against the sun . . . Back at half past, Evans. And don’t find trouble.

  A stuffed rabbit plays a tune on bagpipes. Through the shop window, the muffled strains of Auld Lang Syne. A short man appears by her side, smelling of attic. No, smelling of mothballs. Mothballs in a closet full of dresses useless in Maine a closet full of shoes.

  Well that’s hardly an Easter tune . . . he raps on the window, encouraging the rabbit to come to its senses.

  One day in London she rode double deckers from Knightsbridge to Deptford. Back to Notting Hill. Hammersmith, Chiswick, Richmond, Twickenham. Sat up top, in front, chin on hands. Watching waiting women spot the bus, the small glad twitch when it came into view.

  The man appears inside the shop pointing out the rabbit’s deficiencies to a salesclerk.

  The landscape changed, became green, then grey again. It was the beginning of a feeling she never had in America.

  Gilbert finds her on the steps to the library, looking at a parking lot . . . Nice view.

  I’d like to go to Greece someday.

  I thought we were off to France . . . he sits next to her.

  Greece is white and clean like this, don’t you think?

  Supposedly Athens is filthy. Rabid cats, begging children— Rome then.

  Are you enjoying the Romans?

  She looks at her shoes, in them, Arabia. I like the desert because it is clean. To have a battery of horses at your command.

  A motorcycle pulls into the parking lot across from them.

  Gilbert nudges her . . . Why so quiet? Trouble with the Romans?

  No more than usual.

  I saw you watching that funny rabbit in the shop.

  A short man came up next to me and I looked at him, and I thought this man has a head flat enough for chess.

  That’s very funny.

  It’s not funny. It’s cruel. It’s Easter and.

  And what?

  Mr. Stokes said when I look at him it’s like being caught in crosshairs. Maggone called me petulant. I had to look it up. She asked why it is that I can’t take delight in things.

  That’s absurd. If you could see the way your face lights up when you speak of the lepers in Ben Hur. You take delight.

  Not the right way, not like the others.

  With a naïveté you mean, delight in—

  I’m a cynic you said.

  I was warning you. It’s boring not to trust people.

  If you always think they have motivations, you mean?

  Exactly . . . Gilbert fans out his fingers . . . I’m getting dishwater hands now that you don’t wash up in the lab anymore . . . he reaches for her hands . . . Did yours survive?

  She tries to pull away. They grapple. He wins. For a moment he considers her ravaged palm, the skin hard and cracking. Blooms of dried blood.

  What is it?

  Eczema. From the weather changing.

  Hum, has it changed? . . . he touches the ropeburn marking her wrist . . . And this, also eczema?

  Yes.

  Lightly outlining the patch of paler skin on her palm where it frills at the base of the thumb. He looks at her, they are close, huddled over her hand as if over a rare object . . . It looks painful. Don’t you have medication?

  Bergamot. Borne on a breeze.

  Mr. Gilbert.

  Gilbert puts down her hand. Fi Hammond stands before them in her yellow pullover, hands on hips.

  Mr. Betts sent me to find you.

  Gilbert stands . . . Did he. Well, here I am . . . brushing off his trousers . . . I’ll do some research on your eczema, Evans. There must be a solution.

  Spenning rushes up as they approach . . . Madame Araigny has arrived as has the Wharton boy . . . Spenning is sweating, almost shouting, a vaudeville of the scatty academic . . . They are collecting lunches. In a few moments Madame will be available to speak with your group about Tartuffe, Mr. Gilbert.

  I don’t know if we’re ready for that yet.

  Yes well when you are when you are . . . Spenning looks down at his tie, scratches at a spot then looks up at her . . . Rest and rust, Evans. Go join the others.

  Moving away, back against a wall to look up up at the fan vaulting Thorpe at the Abbey orating We must harken back to a time when a king had the sort of power the scalloped effect. At the low end, very small. For all Thorpe’s thundering Prayers, zeal steadily forcing one strand of hair over his forehead dooming him to spend his lecture taming it by hand or breath, for all his rabid hymn singing, Thorpe is exhausted. They are saintless, they have failed him I beg you to imagine this nave the words come again and again her ear against the shell his words lapping. That day after chapel. Finger tracing the wall behind her, the old stone. That is a lovely dress, he said. It was striped and together they looked out over the fields, cricket, hockey. She brought down her cuffs to warm her hands. She wanted things but it was enough that he was there next to her, that she knew about Rosie and he admired her new shoes from Father. An evening breeze delivered the smell of grass and was it for having just seen Father that weekend or was it the grassy smell stirring in her, England, a giving in. Gilbert’s hand tapping the back of the bench, a gladness for him, the evening and looking toward Follyfield, Brinton, the age of it all. Liking the shape made by the outline of School House and chapel. The smoothness of the banister in her hand on the way up to bed. Gilbert’s tapping hand kept tapping and the wind kept stirring the smell of grass, the landscape stayed the same but she saw the piano and railed against it all.

  2

  On the way to the Roman baths, she stops by a tree, hand against the bark to steady herself. They will think she’s been at the glue. To feel Bath bark, here she is, in Bath. And she will try, yes she will. Overhead, a tremendous whoosh. Running out from the park, she stumbles into the square. Above, a flock of swans fills the sky, a great feather bed soaring above Bath, erasing the blue.

  3

  On the way to the Roman baths, Betts and Owen Wharton catch up, smelling of smoke and coffee.

  Catrine Evans . . . Betts asserts . . . I imagine one doesn’t find this sort of thing in your country.

  Not any more.

  Owen stops to pet a dog tied to a lamppost.

  Don’t agitate it, lad . . . Betts shakes his head . . . It’ll garrote itself. I’ve seen it happen.

  Owen leaves the dog. They continue on.

  Actually it was an anecdote about a rabbit tied to a car. Child left it there a minute . . . Betts makes a face . . . That’s the thing about children, what is, simply is. Don’t yet have a polished sense of logic, of—

  Hypothesis? . . . Owen smells his hand.

  Foresight. A notion of What If. A child will think, if a car’s parked, why would it move?

  Inability to extrapolate.

  Precisely. You see it in the first formers, no detachment . . . Betts tears a leaf from a bush, absently t
ests it with his teeth . . . Poor bunny kept up as long as it could.

  No doubt it avoided a certain death by myxomatosis.

  There you go . . . Betts throws down the leaf . . . There’s the bright side, Wharton.

  I don’t like dogs . . . she says quickly to rid the bloody rabbit image . . . They seem. Pointless.

  They stare. The wrong thing to say.

  Don’t they?

  Betts smiles indulgently . . . Everything has a point in your world does it?

  They protect you. Keep you company . . . Owen looks over her head to confirm it with Betts . . . They lead the blind.

  I’m not talking about the blind.

  What about pastries? Art? Not much point in most things if you follow that logic. Music, theatre. Dogs for dogs’ sake, after all . . . Betts walks faster . . . Don’t tell Shakespeare what’s pointless.