‘Billie? Who’s Billie?’ His head dropped. I must have said something wrong.
Then, ‘My best friend. Kept dogs. Over there.’ He waved an arm. ‘His leads are in the shed. He probably left them for me.’ He shook his head backwards and forwards.
‘I had a rabbit once,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘a white one with pink eyes.’ But I don’t think he heard me.
The rabbit put its paws up on his shoulder, its eyes bulging and nose quivering, yet perfectly at home. ‘You can hold him if you like. He’s used to it. I’ve had him since a baby. He sleeps with me. Not supposed to.’ And he chuckled, peering at me, sort of asking me if I disapproved.
‘I won’t take him at the moment, if you don’t mind.’ But I did stroke him as he lay in his arms.
‘I’ve just taken you a kettle,’ he said. ‘You can make a drink now. Brother Andrew is in charge of night drinks, but I like to make my own. His is too strong for me. We like to see to ourselves, don’t we Francis?’ He put the rabbit down and it leapt forward, jolting suddenly to a halt as the lead tightened, then twisted back on itself and panicked as it caught the lead in its back legs. The little monk unravelled the lead, his face reddening with the bending.
‘I’ll show you how to work it.’ He turned back towards the archway.
Really, I had wanted to spend longer in the rose garden, but I followed behind the hopping rabbit. The light was fading fast now and it was probably time to be going, but I kind of dreaded being alone there.
‘I thought I’d find you,’ he said as he padded along the path towards my room. ‘Father said he’d shown you round.’ His head shook and I could see spittle in the corners of his mouth.
‘I don’t want to leave here. I shall be leaving all my friends behind.’
‘Oh! Why? Are some people staying, then? ‘He stopped and pointed away across the gardens beyond the long walk, a part I hadn’t been to. ‘They’re over there. My friends!’ and there was a slight glug in his throat as if he had choked on something. I hadn’t, of course, the faintest idea what he was talking about and I didn’t ask him because he suddenly seemed sad and I sensed that, like me, he couldn’t explain to anyone else his own reality that, like me, he lived in a world of his own, a world that would not really make sense to anyone else. He was a child and I couldn’t help wondering how he came to be here in the first place. Perhaps he hadn’t always been this way. In a strange way, I wanted to protect him.
We arrived at my room and he opened the door quite unselfconsciously and went in. He pattered over to the chest of drawers, on which stood a tray with a kettle and tea things. He took up the kettle and turned to leave the room. ‘Hold him,’ he muttered, pushing the lead into my hands. ‘The water’s in there,’ and he pointed towards the bathroom and then disappeared.
In the short time that he was getting the water, the rabbit managed to sprinkle the floor with small brown ‘currants’ and I wondered if he was nervous in the room with me. Joseph came back with water dripping from the kettle and dark patches soaking his black habit. He was in such a hurry!
‘This is where you plug it in.’
‘Yes, thanks. I’ll be able to do that OK.’
‘Do you want to make yourself a cup of tea now?’ His eager face said it all.
‘Would you like one? Come on, let’s have one, shall we?’
He hitched the end of the lead over the doorknob and before I could do anything was opening the tin of teabags. ‘I think there’s enough teabags. I don’t take sugar.’ And he chuckled in his throat. ‘I expect Francis would like a drop of milk. He usually does.’ He took the cling film off the milk jug, poured some milk into the saucer, put it on the floor in front of the rabbit and stood watching while he sniffed at it. But the milk remained untouched. ‘He doesn’t want it. No, he doesn’t.’ He turned to me suddenly. ‘Have you got animals?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘That’s a shame!’
He sat on the chair; I sat on the bed and watched as he drank some tea.
‘How long have you lived here, Joseph? Is it OK to call you just Joseph?’ He didn’t answer; his mind was somewhere else.
‘I always wanted a dog, but they weren’t allowed. They didn’t allow pets. We found a mouse once and Billie tried to keep it in a drawer, but Brother Anthony found out. He didn’t half get into trouble.’ He shook his head as he remembered.
I thought, He must mean some sort of boarding school. ‘Did you go to a boarding school, then?’
He spoke between gulps of tea. ‘Boys’ home. St Dominic’s. In Ireland. I’m Irish!’ And he bent double with laughter, spilling tea. Some dribbled down his chin and onto his habit. When he’d finished, he got up without a word, as if he had forgotten I was there, put the cup down on the chest of drawers and, gently tugging the rabbit, left the room, shutting the door behind him.
I sat looking at the closed door and wished I could be like that, like someone who, having been given a cup of tea, could just walk out without a thank you or a goodbye or a word. Just go. But obviously, Joseph didn’t care what I thought of him. It must be wonderful to be like that! Never to care what anyone thought.
It was not yet quite dark and a cloud of gnats hung in the air outside the window in the purple light. It was humid, for the breeze had dropped, and I hoped there would be a thunderstorm. I love storms and heavy rain and wind. I had always been able to get the children to sleep by telling them that it was raining. ‘Listen to the great drops on the trees and curl up like a little bird in your nest, all snug and warm, and listen to the tap, tap, tap of the rain.’ They loved that, and even if they didn’t quite believe me, it was all right, because they wanted it to be so and they would giggle and curl up round their pillows and go to sleep. It was a trick I taught myself at boarding school, as sleep was my only escape from homesickness.
I loved my day school, would not miss a minute of it. Even when I was unwell, nothing would keep me at home. In my memory, every day was either hot sun or cold with a crisp, sharp frost. My legs would be covered in goose pimples and sting in the bitter air, but I didn’t mind at all. It was always exciting and I was full of energy, running everywhere, never walking. I was bright at that school, always being praised and being awarded ‘the top desk’ to sit at. I was happy there. Boarding school was quite different.
Chapter 14
Duncan went to his first prep school when he was seven. Doesn’t that seem dreadfully young? The house was suddenly tidy and quiet and Mother was very upset. I had never seen her like that before and someone told me to be very good because Mother was sad that Duncan had gone away. My being there didn’t seem to cheer her up. Ah well! Instead, I heard the story of his going, heard it several times, as grown-ups were delighted by my brother’s charming audacity. He had run off to join some boys playing football without even saying goodbye! All the grown-ups had marvelled and laughed at that so, when at the age of nine my turn came, I tried to do the same.
I didn’t actually know where I was going; no one had taken me to see my new school nor told me anything about it. I only knew I was going to a new school because I was measured for the brown tweed school uniform. So, when my turn came to say goodbye, apprehensive and afraid as I was, I made a great fuss of rushing at them with overexcited goodbyes and then had dashed away, so that they should think me marvellous and brave as well.
It had been the most terrible hell. I had felt terrified and abandoned while the other girls seemed perfectly composed and self-assured. I disguised my fears by presenting to the world a noisy, brash confidence. I was perpetually joking and chatty and soon discovered I could make people laugh with my clowning about. It was a role I found difficult to drop. But at night, when everything had to be silent and when no one could see me, I would bite my pillow to deaden my crying. I am sure things would have been very different for me if I had received some letters or parcels from home.
All the other girls had daily post of tuck, warm gloves, a special pen, five s
hillings from an uncle, but nothing came for me. I didn’t know, of course, that Mother and Father were in the process of separating and had no time nor emotions left to think about me. All I knew was that I had no visits, stayed alone in the common room while the others were taken out for tea at the weekends and spent hours in the lavatory when the others read their letters, because I couldn’t bear the disgrace of having none myself. Having no visits, no letters meant you were an unpopular girl.
One day, after another post with nothing for me, I sat alone at a table in the common room and wrote a begging letter, forcing teardrops onto the letter so that the ink smudged, to make sure Mother could see how sad I was. ‘I am so unhappy. I am crying. Please come and get me. I want to come home.’ I felt so sure then that Mother would come at once to see me, and then everything would be all right
Letters home were posted by the housemistresses, Miss McFarlan and her friend Miss Scott-Davies and I, almost mad with anxiety and fearful that somehow they might forget to post my letter, kept pestering them, kept asking, ‘Have you posted my letter yet?’
Several days went by and nothing was said, and so I asked again if they had posted the letter. ‘It’s very important,’ I said.
Miss McFarlan, a tall, angular woman who wore brown socks, called me into their study, where Miss Scott-Davies was waiting, obviously expecting me, I could tell. Children are not stupid, you know. They understand a lot more than they can put into words. They have a kind of sixth sense. I did then. I knew this interview was not going to be good. I stood in front of them and waited. Then to my sickening horror my letter was produced. Miss McFarlan held it in her hand. ‘Is the letter you were asking about?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I think we had better have a look at it, don’t you, as it seems so important?’
‘But it’s only a letter to Mummy. It’s just something I want her to know.’
‘Open the letter and read it to us, please.’
What could I do? I couldn’t refuse. Was too frightened. Of course, I now know that they had no right to demand such a thing and that I would have been within my rights to refuse. I wish I had said, ‘That’s my property. Please return it.’ Or something like that. I’m so angry still. But I was only ten years old and away from home and scared. I had to do what they said. There was nothing else I could do. I was shaking as I opened my letter. And ashamed.
‘Read it out please, Rose. A little louder please, Rose.’
I know my head was bent down. You don’t forget these things.
Darling Mummy and Daddy
I am very unhappy here. I am crying all the time and I can’t stop. At night, it is bad. Please, please come and get me. All the others get letters. Please, please will you just come to see me.
Your loving daughter
Rose
P.S. I am very, very homesick.
They sat dull-faced and listened to my humiliation.
‘Well, I don’t think we want Mummy to get letters like that, do you? We don’t want Mummy to worry when there is nothing to worry about, so I think you should just tear the letter up. Go along! Tear it up at once.’
I tore it up.
‘In the basket, please.’
I threw the pieces of torn letter into the basket they indicated and with it threw away all hope.
I went back to the common room in a kind of broken despair and in my agitation knocked into a girl who was carrying an opened bottle of ink. The ink spilled on the floor and no amount of apologising and wiping up seemed to eradicate the crime, and so the big girls, the twelve-year-olds, decided there must be a court case; I was to be judged.
‘We want Rose. We want Rose,’ they chanted round and round the house and there was whispering and preparations. This was something I had to escape from. Like a wild animal running for its life, I ran to Miss Scott-Davies complaining of a stomach pain and begging could I please lie down in the sickroom. I hated the sickroom; it was the punishment room for children who talked after lights and once or twice I was told to go there. It was cold and dark and the bed was unmade and you stayed there all alone until morning. But now the sickroom was my only hope and, luckily, Miss Scott-Davies believed me, probably because I must have looked pretty unwell, and so I went and hid, but the girls knew where I was and they whispered outside the door and chanted again and again, ‘We want Rose. We want Rose,’ as they marched up and down outside the door.
And that was the moment I knew, finally, the truth: that I was unlovable because everyone hated me. From then on, I became constantly afraid of the next plot against me. And quite powerless to change anything. Powerless.
Often I imagined punishing, hurting, shutting-up for ever the people who made me suffer so. The bullies. I can’t stand bullies. And that’s the point really; that’s why I did what I did my last night at the abbey. I’m sure of that. But then, as a child at school, I was too frightened to do anything, to stand up for myself, to show my anger. I just went on being afraid. But not any longer.
Anyhow, luckily, something came to my aid; I started to get real pains and in the end was rushed one night to a small, private hospital, where Father waited. Without any time to talk I was put to sleep and when I woke Mother was there. I asked her what had happened.
‘You’ve had your appendix out.’
Oh, what a blessed relief it was to find myself away from school and Mother there too. Would they all be sorry now that I was ill? For what they did? In fact, I did receive a pile of letters from all the girls in the house. Friendly letters, funny letters, letters with drawings and jokes, and they all wrote how much they were looking forward to seeing me next term and they all ended with lots and loads and tons of love and kisses. I didn’t believe a word of it. I could just see Miss McFarlan standing over them during prep and then checking the letters before they went out.
Mother sat with me most days, sitting so quietly, looking so thoughtful and sad; she was completely different, and I assumed that this was because I was ill. I was wrong. Soon I learned the truth, for during one of her long and silent visits she told me, when I was nearly better, that we would be moving near London as soon as I was well enough.
‘Are we all going?’ But I sensed, like a wild animal senses danger, that we would not all be going. We would be leaving Father behind.
‘Who will look after Father?’ And I started to cry, but Mother became extremely agitated in a way I had never seen before.
‘Shush! Don’t make a fuss. Father will be cross. You mustn’t cry. Crying won’t make any difference. Stop crying, Rose.’ And so I didn’t make any kind of fuss – not ever. And I don’t cry, either.
At night, I worried and planned how I could stop this almighty catastrophe, how I could make everyone love each other again. I would run away; I would hide when the day to go came and that would stop it. But, of course, I did none of these things. I was a child in an adults’ world and I was powerless. I imagined how I could change things, how I could exert my will, but in the real world I hid my feelings because people were cross otherwise. Nobody talked to me but spoke in whispers behind closed doors. And Mother cried. Mother cried a lot behind closed doors and I heard her. I’d never heard an adult cry before.
I was at home from the hospital only two days before Father drove us – and my white rabbit, Bambi, who was shut in the boot of the car – up to Middlesex. I was worried about Bambi being in the boot, but Father told me not to be silly; he was a tame rabbit and used to being shut up, he explained to me. And I was grateful for that, for he had not spoken to me for a long time. I’ve had a thing about caged animals ever since. Especially rabbits.
We drove in silence all the way. I tried one or two bright remarks, ‘Oh! Look, aren’t those trees lovely.’ But there was no response and so I gave up and fell asleep. I fell asleep a lot after we moved.
When we arrived at the dismal little semi standing in a crescent of identical semis, my grey nothingness was immediately brightened by the sight of my grandmother, wh
o had been sent on ahead, and was there with my uncle to greet us. Gran had always been there for me like nobody else, and I knew she loved me very much and I loved her to bits. Climbing into bed with her in the early hours of the morning was one of the loveliest things. She was a storybook Gran: warm, cuddly, singing songs and telling stories. ‘I could eat you,’ Gran would say, but now her grim expression confirmed my black foreboding that something catastrophic was happening. And Uncle John was there too.
Father took in the cases and the rabbit and left without a word. That was that. I ran after him, but the door shut behind him before I could get to him and then someone took my hand and told me to be good and quiet because Mother was not feeling very well. I knew Mother was not ill but sad. I remembered the crying from the night before and understood only too well the emptiness and despair she must have felt, and I couldn’t bear it and so, after a short sleep on the unfamiliar, cold sofa, I set about to please her, trying to make her happy again.
First I put on the kettle to make everyone a cup of tea. I did a lot of singing and found an old cloth in the kitchen drawer and began to clean the morning-room windows. Mother was sitting at the table, her chin in her hands. I did a tap dance for her and someone said not to strain myself after my operation, but I took no notice. I had to bring life back somehow.
It was so much more family when Duncan came back from his school. But I can’t remember what he did. For me, it was a grey, dull Christmas and I spent most of my time playing ‘offices’, sitting at the utilitarian, light oak table where the telephone stood. I wasn’t interested in playing mothers and fathers any more. No more dolls. Somehow dolls seemed silly.
Ask Me to Dance Page 6