The delight! The wind rushes under my arms, and, oh, they are no longer arms. They are wings, and I am flying. Birds wheel away, squawking in fright. I dive low and skim the face of the waters, the salt breath of the sea burning my lungs. I swoop high, no longer earthbound. I can go anywhere: away from this library, this city, this island. I can fly to the stars and make my home on the moon.
Up and up I go. No miserable blanket of cloud pins me down. I bask in heat, soar high as the birds, and higher. I am free. I take a deep breath, my nostrils fill with the smell of candles and I see the most curious thing. A feather slips from my wing-tip, flickering as it falls. It is followed by another and another until I’m shedding quills as fast as a chicken plucked for Christmas. I flap wildly, but my wings are melting away. I hurtle towards the sea. It glints emerald, set with islands like topaz gems. I fall and fall, and am finished.
My eyes blur. I jerk my head so that tears do not splash the precious book and blow my nose on my handkerchief. A fellow with nibbled side-whiskers glances up from his newspaper and frowns. I do not care. So what if my life constrains me, tighter than the baskets in which hens are brought to market. This story has lifted me into the heaven of the imagination. I’ve glimpsed a world with boundless horizons. I burn: not to build a contraption of wings, but to shake off the shackles of my existence and make my own way. Build my own life.
Yes! sings my soul. That’s right, Edie, he says. Fly!
I don’t have time to solve the riddle of why my soul sounds like a boy, because I am roused from my trance by the librarian, who whispers that they are closing up. I taste a fall as keen as that of Icarus and vow that I will visit again, and soon.
I return the next day, to be greeted as a friend. On each subsequent visit, the steps become easier to climb, the columns less of an impenetrable forest. The librarian is patient and guides my journey through this kingdom of binding and ink, until my confidence blossoms and I become a seasoned traveller. Every book I open answers a question I didn’t know I’d asked. Each line plucks a resonant string in my soul. I will never tire of such invigorating music.
After three weeks of enchantment, she stops me at the door as I am leaving.
‘Did you have an enjoyable day?’ she asks.
I nod my thanks, still too shy to speak.
‘You could become a member, you know. With your own ticket, you could borrow books and take them home.’
‘Home?’ I squeak.
‘Yes. For one week, after which you must return them, of course.’
She smiles, as though she has said the most natural thing in the world. I am aghast: I can select a book, place it in my bag and remove it from the building. I can walk home without a policeman chasing me along the street shouting, Stop thief! All she asks is that I return it. It is the first time I’ve ever been trusted. I shake my head.
‘Thank you,’ I mumble. ‘Maybe another day.’
I am far too frightened to take her up on the offer. I can hardly tell her I don’t trust myself. If I am the kind of slattern who wakes up with muddy boots on her feet, who knows what infamies I may inflict upon a book.
This aside, the library is refuge and escape rolled into one. A generous world that asks nothing of me save attentiveness and rewards me with gifts beyond measure. My self-education is intoxicating and sweet. Once I commence, I cannot stop. The spark of each question lights the fuse of the next, and the next, until my mind crackles with who, what, how, when and, most essential of all, why: that king of questions, which seeks an answer and is forever left hungry for more. Not that I limit myself to stories. I read everything: from science to history, poetry to novels and back again.
Learning makes me unruly and cantankerous. The more I read, the more Ma and I bicker. The altercation that tops all others takes place on a day as flat and grey as any Manchester can offer.
I’ve scarce set foot over the threshold when Ma lets loose her volley of complaints: the hours I squander with my nose in a book, how a proper daughter would help her mama around the house, and so on and so forth.
‘It’s not right,’ she rails, peeling potatoes with such fury I have the distinct feeling she’d prefer to be flaying my skin instead of theirs. ‘Gadding about, getting into the good Lord only knows what sort of unseemly scrapes.’
In the past I let it roll over my head. But I’m no longer the girl I was.
‘I am hardly engaged in indecorous activity,’ I reply, slamming my hat on to the table and denting the brim in the process. ‘I imagine you would find a library the dullest of places.’
‘How dare you. The sauce of it,’ she hisses, hacking at a green spot. ‘Besides. Excessive reading causes malformation of the female organs.’
‘Codswallop. Since when did you become a professor of medicine?’ I reply. I saw a thick slice off the loaf and search for the dripping.
‘I’ve never been so insulted in all my days! No obedient child would dare address her mother so.’
‘Hah! Don’t like me fighting back? You’d best get used to it. Meek, quivering Edie has gone. You’ll not see her again.’
‘Under my roof you will behave!’
‘Make me,’ I growl.
Her face turns an ugly shade of puce. ‘This proves the truth …’
‘It proves nothing.’
‘Book learning leads to unfeminine behaviour!’ she squawks.
‘Hark at you! If anything proves that women are prone to ridiculous fancies it is claptrap like that. You should try reading a book, Mother dear. It could hardly do any harm to feed your brain once in your life.’
‘You will drive me to drink with your impertinence!’ she squeaks.
I hoot with laughter at the thought of Ma taking anything stronger than tea. On and on she goes: denouncing my clodhopper gait, fire-shovel hands, lantern jaw. What a disappointment I am, an ugly duckling with no indication that I’ll blossom into a swan any time soon. I’ve heard it all before.
‘Mother. You raised me: if I am going to the bad the fault should be laid at your door.’
‘How dare you!’ she roars – at the cheeky answer, or the fact that I dare say it. She primps her lips tight as a miser’s purse. ‘My reputation is intact. I am a beacon of respectable behaviour.’
‘Ha!’ I snort. I slather dripping on to the bread and take a large bite.
‘I did not raise you to be like this.’
‘Like what? I am what I am,’ I mumble, spraying crumbs.
‘You are unnatural.’
‘How so? You fling that word around like bread for ducks.’ I hurl my crust on to the table. ‘What on earth do you mean by it?’
‘You are a young lady. You should act like one: tender, timid and loving. You are a perversion of all that is womanly.’
‘You gave birth to me. If there’s a fault, then it springs from you.’
‘You are sick. I want you cured.’
‘I am not ill!’ I cry.
‘You are!’ she yells, matching me shout for shout. ‘Look at you. You’re a diseased plant, rotten to the root. I should have dug you up.’
‘Ma! I’m your daughter, not a bush.’ My eyes sting. Still she is not done.
‘You are not the daughter I wanted.’
‘Aren’t you tired of singing that old tune? I am the one you have been given.’
‘You are a monster.’
I struggle to control my tears. Considering the years of hurt, I should be inured to pain, but she can find chinks in my armour and wound. At heart, I am still a babe, reaching out for her breast. I shake the thought away. I will not punish myself for wanting the natural comfort of a mother’s love.
‘I am your monster, and none other’s,’ I remark and storm out, heading upstairs to my room.
I hear her through the floorboards, complaining about my intolerable manners to the accompaniment of splashes as she hurls potatoes into the pan. Gradually she quietens as she always does when I am out of eyesight and she wants for an audience. Presently, t
he front door slams as she quits the house on an errand.
I tiptoe downstairs and complete my chores. I wipe the tables, clean the windows and pay particular attention to Papa, polishing his face while I pour out the bewildering content of my soul.
‘Will she always be like this?’ I ask. He listens with his habitual calm air. ‘Will there ever be peace between us?’
He arches an eyebrow. I sigh. I know the answer, even if I refuse to admit it. My grandmother comes in, puffing with exertion. Her face is swiped with brick dust, her apron also.
‘Talking to the wall?’ she says.
‘Papa. He’s a good listener,’ I reply. The only one, I think.
‘We all need one of those,’ she says. ‘Anyhow, I’m parched. Make your nana a cup of tea, eh, pet?’
I obey willingly. Ma returns in time to open up, looking positively smug. Let her plaster on whatever expression she pleases. She’ll not cow me, ever again.
We give each other a wide berth, our coolness tainting the air. I fetch glasses and take around the fried bread with not so much as a salty remark from anyone. I wonder if word got around about the threats I made to the man with ginger whiskers. He’s not poked his nose through the door since that night. If that’s the case, it suits me very well indeed. I never heard our customers so polite when asking for their glasses to be filled, nor conduct such muted conversations, nor tell such decorous jokes. Perhaps I should fight back more often.
The evening drags. When Ma calls time I am grateful to be released. I climb the stairs with weariness far greater than that of the body. I sprawl across the mattress. There is nothing at The Comet but vitriol and boredom. Youth alone detains me. Once I’ve attained an age to seek work of sufficient income to afford lodgings, I will quit this place. I picture a world where I am my own woman and it comforts me greatly. There is nothing so mollifying to the spirit as the knowledge that one’s burdensome existence may have an end in sight.
The following day Ma is milder. She does not go so far as to apologise, but breakfast is laid out: porridge ready in the bowl, teacloth draped over the loaf to keep it soft. It is so unexpected that when she asks me to accompany her on a walk, I agree.
‘Your grandmother can deal with the delivery,’ she says, chewing her lip. ‘Edie. I have had opportunity for reflection. You’re growing into a young woman and it’s high time we spent an hour in each other’s company. Talked about women’s affairs.’
The last thing I want is another of her sermons, but she seems eager to make amends. If she is capable of compassion then I shall be also: shall forgive, even if I cannot forget. We walk a quarter-mile in quiet contemplation of shop windows when she clears her throat.
‘I can be harsh, Edie. I know it.’
‘Mm,’ I say in as non-committal a fashion as I can manage.
‘I do it because I care for you,’ she continues.
‘Mm.’
‘I’ve worried about you your whole life. How you’ll turn out.’
‘I rub along all right, Ma.’
She ploughs on as though I’ve said nothing. ‘I never get a moment’s sleep for worrying. You’re a queer one and the world’s not kind to odd women.’
She speaks with such unwonted wistfulness that I’m taken aback. She prattles on: her monthly curse, the search for respite, the hope for a cure, doctor this and doctor that, at such a precipitous rate that it takes a further half-mile of pounding the pavement before the true purpose of our constitutional dawns on me.
I sag with disappointment. Rather than waking with an appetite for my companionship, she wants someone to accompany her on a visit to the doctor. I shrug off the dissatisfaction. Ma may not be able to change, but I can. I put my arm though hers. I can afford to be charitable while I plan my escape.
‘Look, Ma,’ I chirp, pointing to a milliner’s display. ‘That one with the green flowers would look a treat on you.’
She tugs me away. ‘No time for window-shopping.’
‘Ma, you’re in a powerful hurry.’
She bustles along, not looking at me. ‘I am eager to receive – treatment, that is all,’ she mutters. ‘Lift your feet. Or we shall lose the appointment.’
I fall into step. If there is the slightest chance that this doctor’s remedies can bring about a mellowing of Ma’s character – why, I will tramp a dozen miles and count it as nothing. With a homing pigeon’s sense of direction, Ma makes her way to a street thick with wagons streaming from Old Trafford into the city. We stop outside number 27, a building distinguished from its neighbours by a small brass plate affixed to the wall above the bell-pull. Dr Alexander Zambeco. A host of letters follows the name, so crammed in that they bump up against each other.
‘The place?’ I ask with an encouraging smile.
‘The place,’ she replies, voice heavy as a swung lead.
I’ve rarely, if ever, heard her words so tinged with trepidation. The poor woman. She yanks the cord and a bell clangs within. A minute later the door is opened by a man whose hair is slathered with violet-scented oil. Without a word of greeting, he ushers us up a flight of stairs. It is too cramped to walk side by side, so he leads the way. I follow and Ma brings up the rear. My imagination produces the outlandish notion that I’m being escorted up a scaffold to a gibbet. I giggle at the silly picture. Ma jabs a finger into my backside.
‘Show some respect,’ she hisses.
Our guide titters, the first sound he has uttered, and shows us into an airless room. The paintwork is blotched with grease, as though a company of men are in the habit of leaning their grubby heads against the wall. A mahogany desk swamps the floor. Behind it sits a gentleman I take to be Dr Zambeco. He does not trouble himself to stand, and surveys us from beneath drooping eyelids.
‘Yes, yes,’ he says, although no one has said anything with which to agree.
The perfumed fellow closes the door and proceeds to inspect his fingernails. Ma performs a ragged curtsey.
‘It’s her,’ she barks. ‘My daughter, doctor. Sir. She’s not right.’
‘Ma?’ I say. ‘I thought this was for you?’
The doctor steeples his hands. ‘As I suspected,’ he remarks, addressing the ceiling. ‘A capital case, do you not agree, Mr Atkinson?’
‘Of course, sir,’ replies the assistant.
‘You observe the vein in the forehead, do you not?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘How it swells, how it throbs? Precisely as I intimated in my most recent paper.’
‘Most instructive, sir.’
‘Ma?’ I quail.
The doctor wafts his hand. ‘Your mother has been most descriptive.’ He picks up a sheet of foolscap, clears his throat and reads. ‘“The subject exhibits a lively imagination, indicating baseness of character and moral defect. None of the proper feminine attitudes and behaviours of passivity, dependence, fearfulness or fawning.”’
‘Well, doctor?’ says Ma.
‘As for her physical attributes,’ he continues. He looks me up and down and shakes his head, as if my brawny frame is a sure indication of moral turpitude. ‘I suppose she is within the parameters of the female. If somewhat …’ His voice drifts.
Ma wrings her shawl. ‘Somewhat?’
‘Look for yourself, madam. Any intelligent and enquiring person – such as yourself, madam – may observe the people around her. Think of true women: small of hand, foot and waist. Do not their gentle features denote a gentle disposition? Do not their soft eyes betoken softness of mind? Of course they do. Conversely, one has only to observe the rough manners of this girl: the hulking limbs and mannish voice. The wild look in her eye. Whatever sex she may profess to be, she is no lady.’ He sighs. ‘A suffragette in the making.’
‘No!’ gasps Ma.
‘It is the path on which she is headed,’ he says, almost sorrowfully.
‘This is arrant nonsense,’ I declare.
‘Some miracles a doctor cannot accomplish, however skilled he may be. Some mountains are too
steep to climb. But in the case of your daughter …’ He tosses a cursory glance in my direction and shudders. ‘To the amelioration of her faults I shall bend all my attention.’
Ma blinks, devouring his promises with bright eyes. During his monologue I observe him closely. The velvet lapels of his coat have a greenish tinge and the brim of the bowler upon the hat-stand is pitted with moth-holes. I wonder why a surgeon as prominent as he claims to be wears a jacket with rubbed elbows.
‘I am not afflicted by any of these so-called ailments, sir,’ I say.
The room cools. His brow creases, lips pout.
‘Of course, madam,’ he drones on at Ma. My presence is immaterial. ‘I refrain from listing other conditions, equally wounding to the tender heart of a mother: namely disobedient speech and a perverse flouting of the niceties of social intercourse. Answer me truthfully: does she display a propensity for education, an unhealthy madness for reading?’
‘How can you tell?’ Ma cries, face purple with shame. ‘It’s all since she started going to the library! She speaks to me like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘Oh, I think I would,’ he says.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I insist.
Ma turns on me, eyes flashing. ‘Oh yes there is, Miss High and Mighty. You know precisely what I’m talking about. And this gentleman is of a mind to put it to rights.’
I glare back with equal fire. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me that wasn’t caused by you.’
‘I never laid a finger on you unless you deserved it.’
‘You hate me! That wounds me far deeper than blows.’
‘I’m doing this for your own good.’
‘Rubbish. I think this suits you very well. You can’t push me around any more, and you can’t stand it. What you want is a slave who won’t kick up a fuss.’
‘You unruly little hoyden,’ she splutters. ‘Hold your tongue!’
‘Ladies!’ interrupts the doctor, smiling queerly. ‘Let us have calm words. Madam, I can see the problems with which you are burdened. You have come to the right man. I am best placed to bring about a swift cessation of your woes. I believe my cure will be especially effective in the swift removal of your daughter’s malady.’
The Night Brother Page 10