by Lulu Taylor
She said loudly, ‘Keats’s ode “To Autumn” is one of his most famous poems and I thought we would look at it today as it’s appropriate to the season, isn’t it?’
One of the more obedient girls near the front sang out, ‘Yes, miss’ but Cressie knew it was just a reflex response to the questioning tone in her voice.
She scanned the classroom and saw one of the boys, a big fellow with a meaty face and huge hands – she’d never known that boys of twelve could be so large – staring out of the window. His name came into her head.
‘Fowler, can you please open your book to page ninety-one and read the poem out to us?’
Fowler turned at the sound of his name, his mouth dropping open. ‘What, miss? Me, miss?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said, trying to sound patient but wishing that she’d chosen one of the girls. She’d have to stick with it now, though. ‘Open your book.’
He stared stupidly at his desk where the book lay unopened. He was being aggravating, she was sure of it.
‘Come along, Fowler. Please do as you’re told.’
The boy reached out and slowly opened his book. The other children began to turn their attention to him, some giggling lightly, as though they were anticipating an enjoyable display from Fowler. She waited, her expression as stony as she could make it, while Fowler took his time flicking through the poetry book to find the ode. At last he found it and began to read.
‘Season of mists an’ mellow fruitfulness,’ he droned slowly. His accent seemed to mangle the words she knew so well but it was the way he plodded meaninglessly through them that was destroying it.
Anger rose in her, and she felt her cheeks redden. He’s spoiling it on purpose. He’s going to ruin it. How can I teach it if this is what they hear?
‘Close . . .’ Fowler paused and grinned, then said loudly, ‘Close . . . bosom . . . friend . . .’
The room erupted in laughter.
‘Stop!’ called Cressie. ‘Stop reading, Fowler.’
But he said it again, stressing ‘bosom’ in a strange, squeaky voice that convulsed the boys.
‘Stop it, Fowler, do you hear me? Someone else can read, someone who’s going to take this more seriously. It’s very silly . . .’ Her voice climbed higher, losing whatever authority it had as it did so. ‘Quiet, please, everybody!’
But she had lost control. No one was paying attention. Some of the girls, shocked by the word, began rebuking Fowler while others returned to their private discussions, and the boys took up the squeaky refrain of ‘bosom’, laughing and jostling each other. Only the face of the boy with the round glasses remained fixed on hers.
‘You,’ she said, pointing at him. ‘You read it out.’
The boy obediently turned to the right page and began to read in a clear voice. No one paid any attention. If anything, the noise in the class grew louder.
‘Be quiet, please, and listen!’ she called. Just then she felt something hit her square in the chest. She looked down, startled, and saw a dark blot staining the white front of her blouse. Someone had flicked a piece of ink-soaked paper at her. It had landed plumb and then tumbled down, leaving a trail of spattered ink down her blouse and light skirt. ‘Who did that?’ she demanded, furious. ‘Come on, who?’
The room was descending into uproar. The boy with the glasses looked meaningfully at another who still held a ruler in his hand, and was guffawing loudly with his neighbour.
Just then the door to the classroom swung open, and another of the teachers stood there, a man she’d seen in the staffroom, in a tweed suit and burgundy waistcoat, his hair stuck down in a military style, and with a neat moustache. His face was thunderous, his fists clenched.
‘What on earth is going on here?’ he roared. The room was instantly silent. He looked around with icy eyes, taking in the chaos and the stain on Cressida’s blouse. ‘Miss Fellbridge, who is responsible for that mark?’
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she stammered.
The teacher scanned the room and spotted the boy with his ruler, the bottle of ink perched precariously on his desktop. ‘Thornton, come here.’
Thornton, pale now, got up and went to the teacher, who grabbed the boy by his ear, twisting him round and making him cry out in pain.
‘You vile little boy. Go directly to Mr Granville and tell him that you’re to have a good thrashing for this.’ The teacher shoved the boy out of the classroom, kicking his behind as he went. Then he turned back to the room of now quiet children. ‘Anyone else?’ he demanded.
There was silence, eyes fixed on desks or books.
‘All right. Now, if I hear a squeak out of this classroom for the rest of the lesson, I will punish each and every one of you. Do you all understand?’
‘Yes, sir,’ they murmured.
He glanced back at Cressie. ‘Carry on, Miss Fellbridge.’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ she said coolly. The teacher went out, closing the door behind him. ‘Now, you . . .’ She looked at the boy in glasses.
‘Baxter, miss,’ he said helpfully.
‘Baxter. Please read the poem out from the beginning.’
His clear voice began to fill the room. The others were quiet, listening obediently. For the first time she had the complete attention of the class. But Cressie could find no joy in it.
In the staffroom later that day, the teacher in the tweed suit came up to her.
‘Getting it rough, aren’t you?’ he said sympathetically, stirring the cup of tea he was holding. ‘I’m afraid they can be tough on the new teachers. You need to get a few of them well caned. Show you mean business.’
‘Thank you for helping me today,’ she said politely. ‘But I don’t want to use those kinds of methods if I can help it.’
He laughed. ‘You’re wasting your time trying anything else. Fear is the only thing those little blighters understand. They don’t want to sit there listening to you. Forcing them is the only way.’
‘Surely there are other ways to reach them,’ Cressie said helplessly.
‘No. You have to be tough with boys like those; the girls not so much, perhaps, but their insubordination is more insidious. Boys don’t dissemble. You can see when they’re misbehaving and the thing to do then is beat them. It’s all that works. The girls . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I’m a bachelor. Women are a mystery to me. But I do know that the girls need their little covens broken up. They’re all obsessed with each other – who likes who, who says what. If you want to get through to them, rewards are things that the girls like. Pretty pencils, badges and so on. But if you think it’s love of poetry that’s going to get them all going, you’re very much mistaken. You have to force the knowledge into them and then leave ’em to it. As it is, they all want to be driving trains or having babies. I don’t know why we bother sometimes.’ He looked at her almost sympathetically. ‘You’ve had no training for this, have you?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I thought I could do it on instinct.’
‘Pah! Listen, come to me if you have any more problems. I’m an old hand. I’ll sort ’em out. I had worse than this in the army.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re most welcome. The name’s Crofts, by the way. And you should try gin on that ink stain.’ He turned away with his cup of tea and walked away.
She watched him go, her spirits sinking even further, wondering if she would rather give up than turn to Crofts and his ear-twisting ways.
Cressie walked towards the school gate, heading for the station. As she went to step through, a small figure appeared and blocked her path.
‘Miss?’
She looked down, startled. There was the boy from her Keats class. What was his name? Oh yes, Baxter . . . ‘Hello, Baxter. What is it?’
‘I just wanted to say, miss, that I’m sorry you got the ink thrown at you today.’
She looked down at the stain on her shirt, grown to a large blossom with blurry edges. It was like a branding, a permanent marker of her shame. ‘Thank you. Th
at’s kind of you.’ She was touched but also embarrassed. She shouldn’t be in a position of accepting sympathy from a pupil like this. It was almost worse than Crofts rescuing her.
‘And . . .’ The boy looked up at her, eyes wide behind the lenses of his round spectacles. ‘I wanted to say how much I liked that poem, miss.’
She blinked at him. ‘You did?’
‘Yes, miss. I thought it were very good.’ He frowned and recited in a sing-song voice, ‘Season of mists an’ mellow fruitfulness, close bosom friend of the maturin’ sun, conspirin’ with ’im how to load an’ bless with fruit the vines-that-round-the-thatched-eves-run.’ He ran the last bit into one long word and stopped proudly. ‘I spent all me lunch hour learnin’ it. An’ I’m gonna learn the rest too.’
She smiled, filled with pleasure. ‘That’s wonderful, Baxter! Well done. Did you really like the poem?’
‘Oh, I did, miss,’ he replied solemnly.
‘Would you like to learn more about poetry?’
‘Yes, miss.’ Baxter nodded eagerly. ‘I love books. An’ comics. I read my comics all the time – me mum buys ’em for me. She works, you see, so I go ’ome and she lets me get comics for when I get back and let meself in. But we don’t ’ave so much in the way of books. I get ’em from the library.’
‘What do you like?’ she asked, picturing Baxter on a narrow bed in a tiny box room, reading away in a silent house, waiting for his parents to get home from work.
‘Adventures,’ he replied briskly. ‘Treasure Island’s a good one. Last of the Mohicans is a corker. I like mysteries too. But my favourite is Jack London.’
‘Those all sound marvellous.’ She looked at him tentatively, her heart lifting. ‘Perhaps, if you like, I could teach you a little more about books and poetry. In the lunch hour or something like that.’
The boy grinned. ‘I’d like that ever s’much, miss.’
‘That’s wonderful. I’ll see what I can do.’
‘All right then. See ya, miss.’ Baxter pushed his satchel back and darted off as swiftly as he’d appeared.
At home a letter was waiting, addressed in the hand she knew from Ralph’s first letter. She thrilled to see it on the front of the envelope and held the letter close to her chest as she ran up the stairs to the privacy of her bedroom.
In her room, sitting on the bed, she opened it carefully and pulled out two sheets of paper, one writing paper and the other finer. She unfolded the finer one and saw it was a sketch: it was her, unmistakably, as she had looked in the garden at lunch the other day. He’d caught her in just a few lines and scribbles. She looked ethereal, her eyes holding a note of something mysterious and vulnerable, and yet there was a strength about her too.
She stared at it for a few long minutes, wondering if this was truly how Ralph saw her, or if he was flattering her with the freshness and beauty in the lines of her lips, the curve of her cheekbones and the depth of her eyes.
The letter read:
Cressida
You’re possessing my imagination at the moment. I want to draw you over and over. I already have you in my mind and soul.
Until I see you again,
Ralph
She read it, trembling. How should she interpret this? Did all artists express themselves in this romantic way? Were they allowed to write in ways that would seem to mean something serious if they were from anyone else? After all, this read deliciously and dangerously like a love letter. But how could it be? He and Catherine appeared so united, so at ease with each other. What did it all mean?
She threw herself back on the bed, the letter pressed to her chest, and stared up at the ceiling, wondering. She couldn’t help hoping, almost fearfully, that she really had possessed him somehow, that he felt something for her in the way that she did for him.
Another thought occurred to her.
Or . . . perhaps Catherine told him to write this.
She remembered the look of relief that had passed over the other woman’s face when she had heard that Cressida would sit for her portrait. How much would Papa pay them for a portrait? It must be a good sum. The little flat was charming but while it showed evidence of good taste and refinement, it was quite clear that they were poor.
Suddenly she pictured them at the table in the studio, cups of tea cooling in front of them as Catherine gave Ralph his instructions. ‘Woo her,’ she was saying. ‘Flatter her. We need more commissions and Cressida Fellbridge will have dozens of society friends who will want their portraits painted.’
‘Portraits.’ Ralph turned his eyes up to the ceiling. ‘I don’t want to do these bloody portraits. You know what I want to paint.’
‘We need money, Ralph, don’t you understand? You spend what we have on things like that marble bust, but we need to pay the rent too – and buy food and clothes and all the other necessities. Your uncle won’t help us with money, and his introduction to the Fellbridges is the only good thing he’s ever done for us. We need to make it work, capitalise on it. Turn it into a real income. Wouldn’t you rather paint society misses than fat, old, red-faced colonels?’
‘Oh, all right.’ Ralph pushed out his lower lip mulishly. ‘If you think it’s best.’
‘I know it is,’ Catherine replied determinedly. ‘Get this girl, and we’ll get more. We’ll be able to pay the rent a year in advance. If we stockpile some money, then . . .’ she said, looking crafty for a moment, ‘we can take some time off so you can do the painting you want to do.’
‘Really?’ He looked at her, frowning. ‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes. As soon as we’ve earned enough, you can take three months to yourself to paint whatever you please.’
‘All right. It’s a bargain.’
‘Good.’ Catherine pushed the sketch pad towards her husband. ‘Now, sketch her. Make her look divine. And we’ll write something to her about how she’s captured your imagination too. We have to make sure she’s in the bag.’
Ralph took up his pencil and began to sketch.
The picture in Cressie’s mind faded and she was looking up at the ceiling again, the feeling of delicious excitement ebbing away.
Is that how it was? she wondered gloomily. How will I ever know the truth? She picked up the sketch and examined it again. It looked suddenly silly and meaningless, a scribble of someone who didn’t really exist, a figment of Ralph’s imagination, designed to flatter her.
She let it fall onto the bed and sighed.
It’s better if it is like that. The other way can only lead to trouble.
Chapter Nine
The doctor buzzed his little saw against the cast, cutting it away from Emily’s leg. She had anticipated pain but there was only a faint tickle as the saw made its way from her knee to her ankle.
The limb that was revealed looked different from when she had last seen it: it was smaller somehow, with a wasted look. The skin was flaky, dry and speckled with scaly patches, and covered with a fuzz of dark hair. A pungent smell of unwashed skin filled the room.
Emily stared at it with horror. It looked awful. She’d imagined she’d see her normal leg the way it had been, and that she’d be able to get up and walk away.
‘Don’t worry,’ the doctor said, seeing her expression. ‘You’ll be perfectly fine but you’ll need to look after it carefully for a while. Don’t shave that hair off for at least three days, do you hear? I know you’ll be dying to. You need to treat the skin very gently at first. We don’t want any infections starting there. Soak it in warm water for twenty minutes every day, dry very carefully and apply an unscented lotion to the skin – you need to pamper it for a bit. You might get some pain and swelling – that’s completely normal. Use some gentle massage and hot packs if that happens. Meanwhile we’ll get you started on a course of physio to rebuild the muscle. And you’ll need a stick for walking until your muscles have a bit more strength.’ He smiled at her. ‘But I’m very pleased. You’ve healed very well.’
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘One less
thing to worry about.’
‘Just take it slowly.’
She smiled up at him. ‘I’ll try.’
But it’s just not that simple, she thought as she went home on the bus, her leg feeling curiously light now that it was out of the cast. It was frustrating that in one part of her life she was being forced to move fast – getting the house sold, working out how to pack up their lives and where they should go – and in another she was being told to slow down, look after herself and take things easy. How can I, when there’s only me to do things?
She and Tom were sharing the childcare but that meant that when she was at home, he headed off to work. Of course she was grateful to him for moving in – What on earth would I have done without him? I couldn’t have coped at all – but there was a limit to what he could do. It was her responsibility to take on the dismantling of her life.
The revelation of her situation had affected Tom oddly. He had listened quietly, clearly shocked, and asked questions, but he had quickly accepted it. He did not question what Will had done with the money. In fact, though appalled, he did not seem at all surprised.
‘He had the potential for it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I always knew that.’
‘Did you?’ Emily was startled. She knew that Tom had never felt close to Will – they were too different for that. Tom was sensitive and creative, and not ambitious for material things, while Will was hungry to prove himself in the world, judging himself and others by what they had. The two of them had been superficially friendly, but neither bothered attempting anything more. Emily and the children were the only things that bound them together.
Tom looked at her meaningfully. ‘I sensed things about Will,’ he said.
‘Really?’ She was alert, wondering if Tom had guessed how things were even before the accident, if he’d seen below the glossy surface to the truth about how things were. She half hoped he had, and was half afraid. She’d tried so hard to make sure no one knew that she’d scarcely admitted it to herself. Things were not good. They hadn’t been for ages. She asked carefully, ‘What did you sense?’