by Janet Ellis
I don’t care a fig for his thoughts, so interrupt him. ‘Dr Edwards, will you come to the field behind St Helena-at-the-Wall tomorrow?’ He begins nodding vigorously even before he has heard me out. ‘At this same time,’ I say. He pats his waistcoat as if he kept a timepiece there, but the pocket is flat. ‘Listen for the church clock tolling,’ I tell him. ‘When you have counted six chimes, leave your lodgings.’ He must get every detail right. ‘There is a tree there, not far from the church wall. I have tied a ribbon round it so you’ll know it. It is the perfect place . . .’ His little eyes are bright; he follows me like a dog with a bone held above him that he must not lose sight of before he jumps to get it. ‘It is the perfect place for you to begin teaching again.’
He sways his large head about, I hope he is not curdling his thoughts. ‘In the open air?’ he asks.
I nod. ‘With a tree for shelter,’ I say, smiling as though it’s a blessing.
‘I have a room here, with a desk.’ He points up to the window. ‘Better than a field, surely.’
‘No, we must begin in secret, Dr Edwards. I began to tell my father of our intention, but he is out of sorts at the moment and not in the mood to listen. His humour will improve in time, I’m sure, and he will accede, but I am too impatient to wait!’
‘Well . . .’ he mulls this over.
My heart beats rapidly; I had not thought he might refuse. ‘Do you have some of your wonderful books here, Sir? If you are not prepared to meet me tomorrow, could you at least bring them to me?’ I step towards him, letting my hands go to his.
He looks anxiously about. ‘I do, Anne.’ He grips my hands in his rough mitts and breathes heavily, then runs his tongue along what remains of his upper teeth. ‘But your father has been a good friend to me and I would not want to upset him.’ All the world fears my father. He puts very little effort into his tyranny and is all the more effective for it. Here is Dr Edwards, gurning with anxiety while he wrestles with his dilemma.
‘Oh, Dr Edwards,’ I say, my voice trembling with sadness, ‘if we are not to recommence our study, then I shall have to ask my father to send me to his sister to occupy me. I am starved of learning. That will have to suffice. I’m sure she has much to impart.’
‘No, no,’ he says, piqued, ‘if we are resourceful, I expect we can steal some hours when you are safely from the house and I have some time to spare. Eventually, your father can be told. Your aunt is a clever woman, I’m sure, with much to teach you. But she may not know the best way, and I certainly do.’
If Dr Edwards had ever clapped eyes on Aunt Elizabeth, he would not consider her a rival. I raise my eyes to him, and then summon every effort to picture my brother, his little chest heaving as he struggled to breathe in his last hours, then hardly rising at all as his life ebbed away. It is an image as vivid as if I saw it an hour ago and, as I intended, it makes me cry. ‘Thank you, Sir,’ I say through my tears. I make no attempt to catch them. Dr Edwards waves his hands uselessly, he has nothing to offer to dry my cheeks and fans at the air as if that might do it.
‘Dear child, of course we must continue.’ He must think I am overcome with gratitude. ‘Are those tears of happiness?’
I choke my breath out in uneven gasps as if I sob. ‘Yes! And relief,’ I answer, truthfully. ‘Thank you, I will try and be the best pupil you ever had.’ I’m certainly going to be the last. He bows and with a reluctant, ‘Farewell, my dear student,’ he goes inside, muttering about which books he’ll bring and what instruction I’ll get.
Whenever I catch someone’s eye, I wonder if they are waiting till I’m out of sight to run ahead and inform on me. It is tiresome to be so suspicious all the time. Only the wide eyes of stray children seem to look at me with natural curiosity. I certainly hope Grace has made herself scarce. Only if Fub were waiting would I want to hurry home. I place him in every room, as if I’m arranging a doll’s house. Here he eats; here he sleeps. Through this door he bathes and next to that, he dresses. And everywhere he strokes, kisses, pushes, rubs, paws, caresses, bites or pulls at me. We get at each other in every corridor or hall, in each doorway, on all the steps and sills. My imagination is so clever at depicting these couplings; so clearly do I see them, they might almost have happened. These visions make me ache below – there might be a weight suspended there it pulls so much.
The house still slumbers, tired from its battles and skirmishes, and does not open an eye when I come in.
* * *
By dint of keeping silent and watchful, I move around all that day unobserved. When I hear Jane come from the kitchen, I leave the hall. When she canters into the dining room, I skip upstairs. My father has gone out – his hat is gone from the hook and nuggets of mud, loosened from the soles of his boots, mark the route of his leaving. From the nursery comes the usual constant, steady murmuring – the baby cries, my mother speaks softly and Grace’s high chatter is the descant above.
In the late afternoon, on my bed with my eyes closed, I rehearse the next morning’s events. I plot each step carefully, as Ariadne laid the string to guide her. I decide exactly how I shall beguile him to think he’s about to have a different sort of lesson. I will bind him twice, once with ties and then with desire. I fetch two long measures of silk I belt my dresses with, and practise a knot. Pulling up my skirt and petticoats, I trace where the blood pumps along its course from my thigh to my knee and press lightly where I’d need to pierce to best effect. There is such sweetness to these plans, such harmony, that when it begins to rain and I hear the drops fall on the slates and piping outside, it is as though my thoughts are bursting into song. Jane calls for supper, but I have no appetite and do not go.
The night is solid, an obstacle that I must climb over to get to the next day. In my dream there is a tapping on the window. I know it to be Dr Edwards himself, his knuckles against the glass. Opening the window, I lean down to him, and unlace the front of my nightgown so that he can see me, my bare skin, my breasts. He holds up a jar of honey and begins to pour it over his head, which is annoying and amusing to me, both at once.
When I wake I have to shake myself free, like a dog from water, from the image of his sticky hair and silly gaze. I kneel at the side of my bed and feel under the bolster. Even though the cloth around it is still warm from the heat of my head, my fingers find cold steel. The blade greets me, familiar as if we were old friends. I remember Fub’s hand under my skirt, the saltiness of him. ‘Wait,’ he’d said, the while putting his tongue in my ear, which was incongruous and yet melted me. ‘Wait,’ as he guided my hand to him and ‘Wait,’ till he knew I could not, then still saying ‘Wait’. My insides squeeze together at the thought of him, and if I did not hold that little sharp knife, I might return to my bed and fill my head with these thoughts and fill myself with my own hands.
The idea of meeting Dr Edwards when the day has scarcely started makes me catch my breath in a little laugh of pleasure; it jumps in my throat, alive as a bird.
Chapter 20
I wrap a shawl round me, over my dress, and hold the knife beneath it, keeping it in front of me with both hands like a prayer book. The scarves! I almost forget, but there they wait and I push them into my pocket, tied underneath my skirt at my waist. They go in deep and lie softly. The house breathes but does not stir as I tiptoe through it. The first rays of the sun through the windows stripe the dull surfaces of tables and walls, but nothing moves. The noise of the key in the door lock is so sudden and loud it startles me, though I think I am prepared for it. I wait, braced for a cry or call of question, but it does not come. The door creaks a little as it opens, but by now I am confident that I can leave unseen. I don’t look back as I go down the street, but for a while I feel the gaze of the house on my back, as if every window watches me. Above some of the doorways a light still flickers – those lit late that now burn low, to no purpose.
On one corner, a tethered dog is being bothered by a shabby boy –
he kneels beside it and worries at its ears, speaking nonsense, too close, into them. The animal, flinching, seems puzzled and a little afraid.
‘Leave it!’ I say, remembering too late that I should not call any attention to myself. The boy turns cloudy eyes to me – I can tell that a large amount of drink has rendered him no sort of witness.
‘What? What?’ he says, trying to stand, holding an unhelpful wall for support and sliding over to one side.
‘Leave that hound and be off with you!’ I am bold with something, but it cannot in all honesty be with something too righteous, can it, considering the task I am about. He scurries away, one arm half in and half out of his jacket – the thing is too big for him. The dog and I regard his awkward passage together for a moment, then it settles its head on its paws with a sigh.
‘And thank you graciously, too,’ I say, feeling aggrieved. For a moment, I’m tempted to kick the cur. But I cannot waste my time or energy on an undeserving animal. I shouldn’t even have bothered myself with a boy in a stolen coat.
The sun will not rise high any more this year, and there is too little power in it to dry yesterday’s rain. The streets shimmer in a fine mist, out of focus as in a mirage. The point of the knife is real enough; I test its sharpness against my finger. ‘Not too long,’ Fub had said. ‘This knife is a short, pointed one, thick enough to stand the force but not so wide it doesn’t pierce.’ The little weapon is up to the task, I am sure – only my strength is untested. What if Fub walked with me now, my accomplice? Might we have to dart into doorways to kiss and touch, forgetting the hurrying time? ‘It’s a job for one, this,’ Fub said. Did he? ‘Better alone.’ Did he say it? Or do I only hear it in my head?
I pass few people and those I do are either sleepy or intent about their business. We are not concerned with each other. There is time in the day for conversation and play, but at this hour we are all separate and silent. I have no doubt he will be there. Dr Edwards was greedy in accepting this, my last invitation to him. I imagine him as he rises, dresses, drinks, eats, farts and walks into the street. He hears the sounds around him and sees the sun rise above as if it will all be the same tomorrow.
When the cobbled streets give way to earth then to fields, I discover there is a small hole in my shoe. Soft-soled, I can already feel each stone and crack, and a puddle wets my foot. Pushing the gate by the church open on to the meadow, there is a strong smell of fox, dense and fibrous. I walk through a web and in trying to rid myself of every last clinging strand, flailing my arms awkwardly, I catch the point of the knife on my palm. It makes me gasp. ‘Get used to the feel of skin,’ I say aloud. ‘There’ll be more of that.’
The church glows as the sun begins to catch its shape. Oftentimes it has people in it who make promises about each other’s safe-keeping. And I have sat in churches, too, my head bowed – though my mind wandered. I have no thoughts of God and Love. He has let me down and disappointed me too often, and if He is in every living thing, as they say, then He finds himself strangely shaped more often than not. As I go to my rendezvous, is He even now wrestling with the Devil over my soul? ‘All this and before I have had time to eat!’ He yells, while the Devil smiles and points at me: ‘She walks with purpose, does she not? I have her, wouldn’t you say?’ Blasphemy to add to my other crimes!
Now I am both laughing to myself and also reminded that I have the devil’s own hunger, too. First, a little work, then I can eat. I am seldom one to forfeit a meal. ‘We care for each other. Or not,’ Dr Edwards had told me as we gazed over London’s tiny territories. As ye sew, so shall ye reap, I think.
In the meadows below a herd of cows wanders, grazing. They are too far away to hear. I amuse myself by holding out one hand flat in front of me and creating the illusion that they roam on my palm. The scudding clouds move swiftly overhead. It is a painting with moving life in it, and I wonder what names these clouds have, what colours an artist might need to re-create the scene. Dr Edwards would have told me. I feel a shaft of pure sorrow. If he had not betrayed me twice over, there would be no meeting under a tree, no sharpened steel. I might be going to him for more schooling now. In the years that have passed, my head would be so full of learning I might have to walk bent over with its weight. I could not help but know the Latin names of the plants, why the wind blows warm as it does today. I could name clouds and colours. I picture Dr Edwards coming towards me laden with books, perhaps with a violin in its case ready for me to play. But in my vision, I skip towards him like a child and I am not that child now and have not been for some time.
* * *
Dr Edwards is there but he doesn’t look out for me. A flash of anger – should he not be anxious that I may not come? I should rouse him with a furious yell. But I save this feeling as another weapon to use later; I shall need everything in my armoury to drive the knife home. He is reading, as he so often did, and it is only when my shadow falls over him that he looks up. He lets the book drop and it sinks into the wet grass. His hat falls back and he grabs at it, shoving it hard on to his head, then pushes one arm to the ground to try and raise himself. He is not used to getting up from so low down and he flounders like a beetle on its back. I could help, but first I need to hide the knife. Removing my shawl, I place both weapon and its shield beside me, the one obscuring the other.
‘Annie,’ his voice is thick with phlegm – he has obviously spoken to no one else yet today. ‘This is the tree you meant, then. I had to look carefully for the ribbon; the rain made it shrink.’ I pull at his free arm to right him. He is heavy but my blood is rushing hot and gives me strength. Upright, he pats and smoothes his clothing as if to smarten himself before encountering fine company.
‘Quercus robur. The mighty oak.’ He cannot help but tell me this, I think. Such was our habit, for so long. For a moment I am almost fond of him, which will not help me. But then I remember the fair, his hand on my shoulder and how he gloated when he saw Fub’s arm circle my waist. He would speak to my father soon enough, he had promised it and would hold firm. Any affection shrivels like a dried grape.
He fishes into the deep pocket of his coat, and produces a linen-wrapped parcel. ‘Comestibles,’ he smiles. ‘No need to go hungry.’
Hunger again! Everything conspires to remind me of my empty stomach. But I have determined that Dr Edwards ate his last meal out of my sight and I have no wish to dine with him. ‘Later, Sir. I am not wanting yet,’ I say. ‘At least, not for food.’ I smile suggestively at him and he looks quickly at me, his eyes bright.
He pockets the little package. ‘For what then, Anne? For what kind of things does your appetite quicken? I shall do my humble best to inform you as ever.’ He tries a little bow, but his stiff back will only allow a small incline of his shoulders. A soft wind stirs, making its way over the meadow like an incoming tide, bending and denting the grass. Above us, the branches sway and twist and the leaves rustle, but autumn has not quite nudged late summer away and they will not fall yet.
‘There was a lesson, a very particular subject, that you began to teach me when I was a little girl.’
‘Lesson?’ he looks a little suspicious and swivels his gaze about him, as if we may not be alone and the meadow might suddenly reveal others who have been hiding in the concealing grasses. ‘Which lesson?’
‘An important, enjoyable lesson, Sir. Which you were well-placed to teach.’ I am going about this too quickly, but I cannot get my breath easily – I am choked by his solid presence. I must speed on with my task before I am stifled.
‘You showed me,’ I say, biting my lip, modest and sweet, ‘that men have a need to get with women, for the differences between them make it urgent and right for them to be with each other.’
He seems puzzled, but he surely cannot have forgotten my small hand on him, his sputtering conclusion.
Then he smiles. ‘Ah, yes.’ A wet sigh. ‘Ah, yes. Do you like to think of that, Anne?’
‘I do. And I think of it often.’ I give him what I hope is a coy smile. We are standing a little apart, but I step a fraction towards him. Enough to hear the wheeze of his outward breath, and to notice two long, wayward hairs that sprout from a mole on his cheek and cross and tangle together as they grow. ‘I hoped, when I asked you here, to continue that class, Dr Edwards.’ He listens intently. ‘I know you saw me with Fu—, with Mr Warner. And you are right to presume that we have knowledge of each other.’
He breathes in and out quickly, as if he goes over a little bump in the road. ‘Knowledge?’ His mouth twitches. ‘Do you mean . . . ?’ He leers at me and puts his hands together, circling the thumbs.
‘Oh Sir, you understand me, I know you do. He did what he wished and I did not resist. Even though I should have done,’ I simper.
Dr Edwards rolls his shoulders in their sockets. I pick at a spot of dirt on my skirt. Then I look up shyly. He is like a fish on the hook, as Fub said he was, but I must reel him in slowly and steadily, otherwise I’ll watch him swim off to safe, deep water. A little more bait.
‘Fub is a boy, as you have seen, and because of his callous youth and thoughtless haste, I have to tell you that he went about his business carelessly. He could not perform for me as I might, perhaps, have liked.’ I look sideways at him. At that ‘perhaps’, dropped like a cherry into cream, Dr Edwards sniffs the air.
‘Perform?’ he says, his voice thickening.
‘Too quick, Sir.’ I have him now. ‘You began a mighty interest in me with your lesson and I had hoped to, oh, continue to study,’ another coy glance, ‘but in Fub, I lacked a good teacher.’
Dr Edwards stares at me. I look closely at him. The years have not been kind: his eyes water and the lids are pinkly puffy; his cheeks sag and his lips are pitted and cracked. Each breath is dragged in to his lungs like coal sacks over rubble. He may not even have the strength or inclination to undertake another ‘demonstration’. Moreover, the need may have passed. Much as when we are grown and we chance on a favourite childhood toy but cannot remember the passion that kept that object cherished, so might Dr Edwards look at his bawdy past with affection but from a great distance, considering it irrelevant and even a little dull. If so, this may prove to be a long lesson.