The World Within

by Jane Eagland

  Fighting her rising panic, she goes to the window and looks out. The bedroom is at the side of the house overlooking a garden — more roses planted in rows in rectangular beds and straight gravel paths. But at least she can see the sky, which today is a clear blue and cloudless. If only she could float up into it and be carried away from this place …

  She remembers with a jolt that the teacher will be returning at any moment and she hurries to unpack her things. This doesn’t take long. Then she sits on the bed again and waits.

  Every now and again there’s a burst of noise from downstairs, girls’ voices, excited and shrill, and laughter. She wishes she could just stay here in this quiet bedroom, that she doesn’t have to go down and face them. But finally the teacher looks in and beckons her and she’s forced to follow her down the stairs.

  “The schoolroom,” says the teacher, opening the door with a flourish.

  As they enter the room, silence falls and all heads turn in her direction.

  Although she lowers her eyes immediately, she has the impression that she’s come upon a troop of exotic creatures like the flamingos in an Audubon watercolor. When she lifts her gaze she sees flowers — pink, blue, lilac — floating on delicate muslins or some shiny material she doesn’t recognize; bare arms and shoulders; gleaming, elaborate topknots; and finally a blur of faces in which the eyes stare hard at her, curious, assessing …

  She looks away. Now that she’s seen these girls she can tell that Charlotte’s advice was pointless. In her drab green dress, with her hair hanging down, lank and loose, she doesn’t even have to open her mouth for them to judge her as odd. And then she thinks of Mary. Mary can’t have fitted in here very well either. But she would have been brave enough to be herself and not pay any attention to what they thought of her.

  Emily squares her shoulders. She will try to be like Mary. Instead of being afraid of their judging her, she simply won’t care.

  The teacher breaks the silence. “Girls, this is Miss Brontë, who is coming to join you. I know you’ll make her feel welcome.” And with that she turns on her heel and leaves the room.

  Almost immediately a girl with brown hair and eyes and creamy skin comes forward and, holding out her hand, says, “Hello. I’m Julia, Julia Caris.” After a moment’s hesitation, Emily shakes the hand and mumbles her name, but of course they all know it already, and from somewhere at the back of the room she hears a mocking echo: “Emilee Brontee.”

  “That’s an unusual name.” The girl is looking at her, not unkindly.

  “It means ‘thunder’ in Greek,” Emily blurts out. And realizes immediately that she’s made a mistake.

  There’s a ripple of sniggers round the room and the same voice as before calls out, “Oooh! Thunder!” in mock fear.

  Julia frowns and goes to say something, but Emily turns away and walks over to the window. There’s a surprised silence and then someone laughs, and a voice calls, “Well done, Julia. Perhaps your welcome wasn’t warm enough!” There’s a general tittering, and after a moment they all start talking again.

  Emily stares out across the garden, her heart racing. She can hear what the other girls are saying and it’s all trivial nonsense. She can’t hear anyone discussing an interesting subject, anyone who talks like Mary.

  She focuses on the view in front of her. There are hills, certainly, as Charlotte promised, but the landscape has been spoiled by a great industrial sprawl with chimneys belching smoke.

  But she has nowhere else to look, nowhere else to go.

  When a bell rings she follows the others into a dining room. She’s glad to sit down — she feels exhausted, worn out with the strangeness of it all. She takes a bite from a slice of bread and butter, but, after struggling to swallow it, she puts the rest back on her plate; she manages a few sips from a cup of tea that she nurses until it’s cold and is taken from her. Then she sits silent and ignored in the midst of the chatter going on around her.

  She looks for Charlotte and sees her across the room at the teachers’ table, listening to Miss Wooler, nodding. To Charlotte, she remembers, this house is familiar, the teachers known to her. She isn’t surrounded by strangers.

  She thinks of Anne and Branwell having their tea in the kitchen with Tabby. They’ll find it strange without her and Charlotte. She imagines Anne, too upset to eat. And Grasper whining at the door, waiting for her to come home.

  A longing to be there with them rises in her throat, so painful it threatens to choke her.

  She slams the door on that vision.

  She mustn’t think of them. That’s the only way she’ll survive this.

  After tea she follows the others back into the schoolroom, where the girls form small knots and talk on, chirruping away like a flock of birds. How can they have so much to say to one another? All this inane chatter.

  Better to be silent if there’s nothing worthwhile to say.

  She takes up her position by the window again until a teacher looks in and says, “Off to bed now, young ladies.” There’s a general movement to the hall, where lit candles have been put out for them, and, having picked one up, Emily trails behind the others.

  Most of the older girls head toward the same door, so she follows them, and there in the corner by the window is the bed with her nightgown on the pillow.

  While waiting her turn at one of the washstands, she secretly observes the other girls. There are only six after all, though downstairs there seemed far more of them. It looks as if they’re all paired up for sleeping which means — oh, blessed relief — she can sleep by herself.

  She relaxes just a little bit.

  One girl, Lydia, seems to be their ringleader. With her blonde hair and blue eyes she’s striking to look at, but her expression is petulant and dissatisfied.

  As soon as they see Lydia’s nightgown, the others cluster round, uttering little coos of admiration and fingering the fine lace and ribbon trimmings. In response to an inquirer, she drawls, “It’s French, of course,” in a dismissive way, as if having expensive foreign clothes is nothing special.

  When at last Emily is able to wash, she finds very little water left in the jug, but she does her best with it and then retreats to her corner. With her back to them all, she undresses quickly. As she dons her own nightgown, sewn by herself under Aunt’s direction and made from cotton with no trimmings whatsoever, she pulls a wry face, imagining what the other girls will say about it.

  She has barely slipped under the covers when the teacher who showed her round appears at the door and stands there, arms akimbo, surveying the room. The stragglers hurry into bed and the teacher paces the length of the room, checking from side to side. When she reaches Emily’s corner, she frowns.

  “Miss Brontë, your shoes.”

  Emily blinks. She has no idea what the woman is talking about.

  “I don’t know what you were accustomed to do at home, but while you are here, rather than just kicking your shoes off and leaving them anyhow, you will place them neatly under your chair.”

  Emily can’t believe this. What on earth does it matter where her shoes are? With an inward sigh she gets out of bed and moves her shoes. She looks at the teacher to see if she’s satisfied, but she’s wrinkling up her nose in an expression of distaste.

  “And that is no way to leave your clothes. Fold your undergarments and cover them with your dress.”

  Emily is on the verge of uttering a tart retort, but she bites her tongue and rearranges her clothes on the chair, aware that the others are watching this charade with great amusement.

  At last she’s allowed to get back into bed and, having extinguished their candles, the teacher leaves them.

  Emily shuts her eyes, but she can’t close her ears and block out the voices, which pipe up as soon as the teacher’s footsteps have died away.

  “Astonishing how some people are brought up, isn’t it?” Emily recognizes the languid voice as Lydia’s.

  Titters greet this remark.

  Lydia go
es on, “If I had underwear like that, heaven forbid, I wouldn’t dream of displaying it to the world, would you? And fancy wearing stays instead of a proper corset — when you’re as flat as a board, you need all the help you can get!”

  More titters and someone says, “Lyddy, you’re so droll.”

  Emily grits her teeth, but she forces herself to stay silent. They’re not worth her scorn.

  Another voice pipes up. “I know something you don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Harriet has a beau.”

  “No!”

  “You hush, little sister.”

  “Come on, Harriet, spill the beans. Is he handsome?”

  “He has very nice eyes. And he dances divinely.”

  “What about you, Lydia? Have you had any special dancing partners?”

  “Oh, dancing.” Lydia’s drawling enunciation invests the word with world-weary boredom. “I can see that dancing with boys is exciting for you children, but I’ve had other fish to fry.”

  Squeaks of delight follow this announcement. “Oh, do tell, Lyddy.”

  “It’s not for your tender ears, mes enfants,” she replies loftily, which has the presumably desired effect of inciting her audience to a frenzy of protests and questions.

  “Enough!” She silences them. “Never mind about me, what about our new friend, Miss Brontee? Has she any admirers, I wonder? Some rustic swain who’s drawn to that ‘Oirish’ accent? Who finds that natural I’ve-just-come-in-from-a-hayfield look irresistible?”

  Gales of laughter greet these witticisms.

  Emily wishes she had the power to launch a thunderbolt at them all.

  The next moment the door opens and a sharp voice says, “Young ladies, if this noise does not cease immediately, you will all receive a black mark.” The door shuts, but there are no footsteps, suggesting that the teacher is hovering outside to check that her threat has had the desired effect.

  Surprisingly to Emily, it does — there are one or two muffled giggles, but no one says another word, and soon the room fills with the deep regular breathing of people sleeping.

  In the dark the pattern of garlands on the bedroom curtains looks like stripes.

  Or bars.

  Oh, Emily, what have you done?

  From misplaced pride and a desire to please Papa, she has trapped herself in this alien place among these strangers.

  If only Mary were here …

  She suddenly sees what it must have meant to Charlotte to discover two kindred spirits here. No wonder she grew so close to them, even to Ellen. She would hardly have been able to help herself.

  Her own behavior toward Charlotte over that business of sharing her secret with Ellen now seems petty and shameful. Why couldn’t she have been as generous to Charlotte as Anne was to her about Mary? Why couldn’t she have been glad that her sister had made a friend instead of holding on to a ridiculous grudge for far too long and cutting herself off from Charlotte?

  Emily’s heart twists with a sudden pain — to have realized this now when it’s not possible to make amends. For here Charlotte is on the other side of the impenetrable barrier that divides teachers from pupils. And Emily is alone.

  So. Just at this moment she has only one option — herself. Tomorrow is her birthday and she will be seventeen. Time enough to become self-reliant. And after all, it’s not the first time she’s been in this situation.

  She runs her fingers over the raised scar on her arm.

  She managed to cope with the dog bite without anyone’s help. By exerting her willpower, she endured that horrible physical and mental suffering without giving herself away. She faced the prospect of death … and survived.

  Surely this can’t be as bad?

  As long as they leave her alone …

  “Trappist monk.”

  “Vestal virgin.”

  Having delivered these sallies, Lydia and her ally, Harriet Lister, go sniggering down the corridor.

  Emily doesn’t even turn her head. She is learning not to care. If those loathsome creatures choose to amuse themselves with snide remarks at her expense, what does it matter?

  In the letter that she’s writing to Mary, she tells her friend what’s just happened.

  She can’t write to Anne — it hurts too much to think of home and her sister and what they would be doing if she were there right now. And she doesn’t want Anne to worry about her. But Mary knows what it’s like here — she’s endured it herself — and it helps to share things with her, such as all the spiteful comments the other girls make about her, jeering at her clothes, her hair, her mannerisms, and in particular her silence, which seems to goad them more than anything.

  I keep hoping that if I don’t react they’ll eventually grow tired of the game. They haven’t yet. But I can bear it …

  She tells Mary about other tiresome things, sure that Mary would have found them tiresome too.

  Like the rules …

  You were right to warn me about them, but it’s no good. I simply can’t remember them all: “walk, don’t run”; “use this staircase, not that”; “set out your work this way.” How on earth did you manage not to break them? I keep failing and so of course I am given black marks, and what with my bad spelling, I’ve had to wear “the black sash” no end of times. It’s all so petty and ridiculous, isn’t it?

  And the deadly walking ritual …

  No one will walk with me, so the teachers are forced to partner me. I think it must be as trying for them as it is for me — the conversation limps along like a man with one leg and inevitably collapses.

  How different it would be if Mary were here — the talks they would have. But then everything would be different if Mary were here. Emily would have an ally who would surely agree with her about the appalling narrow-mindedness of the school’s ethos.

  It seems to me that the basis of the regime here is hypocrisy: Girls are being trained to pretend to be what they’re not.

  Witness this sample conversation between Miss Wooler and Miss Lydia Marriot, whom Miss W. has just reprimanded for being too bold:

  Miss W: “Timidity and reticence are becoming in a woman. It is what men like to see.”

  Miss L: “But what if you’re not timid?”

  Miss W: “Then you must feign it.”

  Can you believe it? Well, I’m sure you can because you experienced all this yourself. And the result is to turn out a set of simpering, affected ninnies, without a shred of originality or an intelligent idea among them.

  As for any education we are supposed to be getting … where is it? Certainly it’s not to be gained from all this learning by rote. Didn’t you hate it too? So dull and pointless. At least on account of Charlotte’s teaching at home, I can keep in the middle of the class without too much trouble and not draw unwelcome attention to myself. I really can’t see the point of trying to win medals, as Charlotte did. Why work yourself to death just to sit at the top of the table?

  She can’t resist telling Mary about the experience of having Charlotte teach her.

  Charlotte has made it clear from the start that here I am a pupil and not her sister, and she goes out of her way not to show me any favoritism. She’s always finding fault with me and picking me up for small mistakes. But it’s a waste of time because, whatever she does, the others, quite unjustifiably, make nasty comments about Charlotte’s partiality.

  But Emily’s not very comfortable with this. It seems disloyal to criticize her sister, especially as Mary is Charlotte’s friend too. What happened to her resolve to be kinder to Charlotte? She shouldn’t have mentioned it.

  Even though she’s only writing the letter in her head and she’s never going to send it.

  What she can’t tell Mary, even in a pretend letter, is what she finds unbearable.

  She hates having every minute of her day organized for her and never having a moment to herself. Even going out doesn’t provide any relief — the deadly walks where they’re organized into an orderly crocodile and
move at a funeral pace to supposedly picturesque spots.

  These places are too soft and cushioning. She feels suffocated.

  What she wants is the exhilaration of tramping over the moors, feeling the wind blow through her. She longs to be able once more to lose herself out there in those wild spaces under that wide sky.

  She can’t even release the pressure of her feelings by playing the piano because it’s in the corner of the schoolroom and whenever she’s at leisure the other girls are there too. It’s intolerable to have to spend every minute of her day in their company. It’s not just that they’re uncongenial and don’t care about anything that matters to her.

  The point is she is never, ever alone.

  Even when she tries to hide herself in the garden while the others are playing ball games, as soon as she settles down in some secret nook in the shrubbery, the little Cook sisters track her down and start chanting doggerel from a safe distance.

  Emil-ee Bront-ee

  Tall as a pine tree

  Emil-ee Thunder

  Made a big blunder

  She longs for solitude, to be able to escape into her imagination, into the world of Gondal. She’s brought an unfinished story with her and hidden it in the drawer under her clothes. Sometimes she takes it out at night and just holds it, like a talisman, a promise that one day she’ll be able to go on with it again. Knowing that she can’t at the moment makes it almost too painful, but she can’t help herself.

  One afternoon, Emily’s late going up to wash for tea — Miss Catherine kept her back to reprimand her, not for the first time, for leaving her boots where someone might trip over them instead of stowing them neatly under the bench in the cloakroom.

  As she approaches the door of the bedroom, which is ajar, Lydia’s voice rings out. “Alfonso Angora! He sounds like a rabbit.”

  They have found her Gondal story! Paralyzed, her heart pounding in her chest, she’s forced to listen.

  “Go on, Lyddy. Read us some more.”