Girl With Dove

by Sally Bayley

  Elocution came from Mrs Rutherford. Mrs Rutherford was a tiny bird from Pagham Bay who came on Monday afternoons to teach us how to round our vowels.

  ‘How Now Brown Cow,’ ‘Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatis, Amant,’ ‘Shirley Shields Was Very Shirty Especially Early On Sunday Mornings Since She Liked to Sleep In But Her Mother Sheila Said That Only Slothful Girls Slept In On Sundays.’

  ‘Shirley was shirty because she was dirty – and she knew it.’

  ‘No, dear. That isn’t right. We’re managing the “s”s today. “Shirley Shields was very shirty especially early on Sunday mornings since she liked to sleep in and slumber.”’

  Mrs Rutherford made me stand in the middle of the front room beneath the chandelier to practise my ‘s’s. Whenever I spoke, I had to address the ceiling and imagine that Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth was about to greet me at the door. Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth were on the doorstep clasping their bags.

  ‘Raise your chin, dear. Look up towards the cornices … to the left, then to the right … Slowly, turn your head slowly. Imagine there’s a large crowd in front of you and they are all dying to hear you. You are the queen of England, about to descend from your royal steed. Victoria used to ride out with her favourite manservant, John Brown. Sidesaddle of course, always sidesaddle. Ladies always ride sidesaddle, with their skirts all tucked to one side. Now let’s do our Shakespeare. Fling your arms wide!’

  According to Mrs Rutherford, everything had to be done with feeling. Shakespeare was only for people with big feelings. If you didn’t have feeling then you didn’t deserve Shakespeare.

  ‘With feeling, dear, with feeling. From the diaphragm, dear, nice and slow. Feel the breath moving up from the centre of you. Push down on your diaphragm … Here, dear. Here.’

  Suddenly the lady with the tiny face and tall hair was beside me. Mrs Rutherford was pushing her fingers and thumbs into my stomach and ribs. Push, prod, prod.

  ‘Let the air out, release yourself from here, like a balloon, like a lovely pink balloon – slowly.’ Push, prod, prod.

  ——————————

  Mrs Rutherford’s favourite Shakespeare was Twelfth Night. It was because of Mrs Rutherford that I started to love Shakespeare; it’s because of Mrs Rutherford that I began to learn him off by heart.

  The first thing you need to know about Shakespeare is that you have to speak him. You speak Shakespeare with passion and feeling. And people with passion and feeling have to hold themselves very still.

  ‘Still as statues. Hold yourself perfectly still, dear. Now close your eyes. I want you to imagine a beautiful stone statue in front of you. Shoulders back, dear!’ Mrs Rutherford pushes my shoulders back until they start to twinge.

  Mrs Rutherford explained the story of Twelfth Night. ‘Twelfth Night is a play about bodies washed up on the shores of Illyria, dead bodies … bodies turned into monuments. So if you’re going to speak Twelfth Night you need to learn how to pause and be still as a statue in a graveyard, my dear.’

  Mrs Rutherford looked at me hard. ‘Are you listening, dear? Shoulders back … and a deep breath from the diaphragm. Now, I’m going to tell you the story. So, stand nice and still in the middle of the room and push your shoulders back and tilt your head slightly to the ceiling … Now, not too far up … Gosh, that chandelier is rather large, isn’t it? But let’s not worry about that. Now close your eyes. I want you to imagine that image of the monument Viola speaks of.

  ‘“She sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief.”

  ‘Now, who is she grieving for, dear? This is the question. Is it for her brother she believes drowned at sea, or another, secret love? Mrs Rutherford paused for a moment, then opened her small round mouth and continued.

  ‘Sebastian died at sea and Viola is grieving silently for him. She’s grieving for someone else too, but that’s a separate issue, and rather mysterious at this point in the play. Let’s focus on that secret love. Things are in rather a muddle at the moment because Viola is making a case for the love women have for men dressed as boys. It isn’t the most obvious way to make your case. Now, hold yourself perfectly still, dear. I don’t want to see even a flicker! Take a few deep breaths and begin … one, two, three … Look up!’

  I looked towards the ceiling and imagined myself in Illyria. Illyria was built of sharp pointy glass. Illyria was an island of glass and light and twinkles. Illyria was a silvery place with four corners, where shepherdesses dressed in pale-blue smocks lived. Illyria was an island full of cherubs. Its shores were made of marble.

  I took a deep breath and began.

  ‘I left no ring with her. What means this lady?’ Pause. I look around me. Mrs Rutherford is sipping her tea and nodding at me, looking pleased. I carry on.

  ‘Fortune forbid my outside hath not charmed her …’ Dramatic pause. Mrs Rutherford calls this a pregnant pause, a pause big enough to have a baby in, nine months of pause and then quite a few more after for putting your feet up.

  ‘Not too long, dear. Just enough to let the audience feel the change of weather. You’re trying to suggest the internal life. This is a pause for reflection. Shakespeare likes us to climb inside the mind. But we mustn’t linger too long. It isn’t polite.’

  ‘Fortune forbid my outside hath not charmed her,

  She made good view of me, indeed so much,

  That sure methought my eyes had lost her tongue.

  For she did speak in starts, distractedly.’

  I pause and look left and then right to the cornices. Mrs Rutherford is dipping her biscuit in her tea. She never offers me one.

  Mrs Rutherford lifts her teacup towards her nose and dips it in. ‘I want to hear those “d”s, dear. “Dis-tractedly”. The “d” is nearly a “t” there. “Dis-trac-ted-ly”. Up on the “trac”. Raise your voice up on the “t”. Do it again! Up, up and away, and then tilt on the “c” before you land on the “t-ed-”, then a little more open on the “ly” – the lovely soft sound of “lee” – we call that a feminine ending, dear. Lots of nice long vowel sounds at the end there.’

  ‘Fortune forbid my outside hath not charmed her … for she did speak … in starts … distractedly.’

  ‘Not too squeaky at the end, dear. You’re not a mouse. No squeaking. Breathe deeply, from the diaphragm. Then release slo-w-ly.’

  I jump some lines.

  ‘Fortune forbid I am the man!’

  Dramatic pause. I think about being mistaken for a man. I’m wearing braces. I push my hands further into my pockets. But I don’t have any pockets. I start to slouch. Mum says that all men slouch unless they’re told not to. It’s genetic.

  ‘Neck long, dear, like a lovely giraffe.’

  ‘If it be so, as ’tis, poor lady …’ I look up wistfully to the ceiling again. Illyria is full of clouds.

  ‘You’re not Minnie Mouse, dear. Bring down the tone. Less squeak please.’

  ‘… she were better love a dream.’

  ‘Shoo, Minnie, shoo! Remember, your breath controls your feelings. Don’t let your breath run away with you. Unfurl slowly, like a gentle kite.’

  Mrs Rutherford is looking up towards the ceiling. She’s looking for her kite, but the kite is flying off to Illyria and the chandelier is tossing and turning. Soon it will fall and land on our heads.

  ‘Fortune forbid my outside hath not charmed her! For she did speak …’ I frown and then frown again. I look at Mrs Rutherford to make sure she can see me frowning. My face feels like crumpled paper. I touch my forehead. I can feel the lines.

  ‘Not so much frowning, dear. No one has died. A woman is simply in love with the wrong man. It’s quite commonplace.’

  ‘She made good view of me … indeed so much that methought her eyes had lost her tongue …’ Long pause. I look ‘heavenward’. I feel my eyes starting to roll. I begin to feel dizzy, and tip over.

  ‘Nice and straight, dear. Lift up your shoulders and draw deep from your diaphragm. Remember, your diaphragm is you
r well. Draw deeply from it. Draw deeply from your well. Lift yourself up out of the well. Leap like a frog, up towards the air!’

  ‘For she did speak …’ I start to grin. I can feel the smile move across my face. ‘She loves me, sure!’ I grin.

  ‘Good, that’s right, a nice little explosion of joy, joy at the thought that someone might love you, just for that moment. At that sure moment you forget all the muddle and misunderstanding this might bring.’

  ‘The cunning of her passion invites me in this churlish messenger …’ I try to curl my lip. I think of the three musketeers and their moustaches. I twirl my moustache and I point my beard. ‘None of my lord’s ring!’ I shake my head. I shake it again and again.

  ‘Not too much, dear, you don’t want to make yourself seasick.’

  ‘Why, he sent her none.’ I pull up my head and stick my nose in the air.

  ‘Not too movie-star, dear. Try to control yourself. Small gestures, small things. Discretion. Acting is the art of discreet moves.’

  ‘Poor lady, she were better love a dream.’ Whispy. Mum listening to Sinatra, or Sinatra singing to Mum.

  ‘No, no, no, dear. Not too movie-star. This is Shakespeare.’

  My favourite part was coming up. ‘Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness.’ Cross. Margaret Thatcher thinking of Arthur Scargill in his tatty anorak. ‘Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper-false in women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!’

  A candle melting, slowly, sadly, making a big mess all over the kitchen floor. Women’s hearts are melting candles. They don’t last for long.

  ‘Snuff it out quickly … Go on!’ says Maze.

  ‘Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, for such as we are made of, such we be.’

  Jane Eyre speaking to Mr Rochester. Someone with a bonnet on. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.

  ‘How will this fadge?’ Like fudge. Dig your teeth deep down into it. Eat it. Eat whatever comes. ‘My master loves her dearly; and I, poor monster, fond as much on him.’ Getting quite hysterical now. Mr Rochester when he finds out Jane won’t stay at Thornfield. Mr Rochester running around the parapets with no scarf on. ‘And she, mistaken, (silly idiot) seems to dote on me.’ Very hysterical now. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle when her cakes have burnt. Mr Rochester thorough bush thorough brier.

  ‘What will become of this?’ Shrug my shoulders and throw my hands in the air. Look as though you’ve just lost everything. Mum after the council have bulldozed through her roses. Mum after all this.

  22

  The Major and His Wife

  At Christmas, Mrs Rutherford brought my brother and me a box of Thorntons toffee. Thorntons toffee was brown sticky square pavement slabs packed away inside a box. I peeled open the waxy paper and stuffed one of the squares into my mouth.

  ‘Now dear, one more poem, I think, before I go. Let’s have Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott”. Let’s hear those nice lapping sounds.’

  But I was still squelching through delicious toffee rocks and mud in my mouth and I couldn’t speak. So Mrs Rutherford left me, mouth stuck and speechless.

  ‘Greedy guts,’ said Mum. ‘You should’ve waited until the lesson was over instead of stuffing your face. How rude! What will she think of us?’

  She slammed the front-room door and the chandelier shook. I sighed and looked at the clock above the mantelpiece. In ten minutes Mrs Stapley would be here asking for her nice cup of tea and scone, Mrs Stapley who was married to a colonel. Or was it a major? ‘A retired high-ranking officer,’ said my grandmother. ‘Very grand. You’ll have to be on your best behaviour. Mind you don’t slurp your tea.’

  Major Stapley and his wife lived on the edge of Lobs Wood on the corner of Maltravers Drive. Maltravers Drive was a wide leafy road with a curve in the middle. Mum loved Maltravers Drive, mostly because of its curves.

  ‘Curves bring mystery, Sally. Nobody wants to walk in straight lines. We can leave that to the Americans! Everyone loves a bit of curve, it feels more like a country lane.’ Mum went all dreamy. ‘Maltravers Drive is such a pretty road. I hope they don’t ruin it by pulling down all the trees.’

  All the houses on Maltravers Drive stood back from the road. They had driveways filled with crunchy gravel that let everyone know that you were coming.

  ‘Did you drop the note off, Sally? There was a cheque inside. I hope you put it through the door properly and didn’t leave it in the porch.’

  When Mrs Stapley came to our house she never rang the doorbell. She always rapped on the window, which made you jump. I think she did that on purpose. She told me once that she used to do this when she was teaching at the Gels’ School to make sure they were awake during their lessons. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat on the window.

  ‘You have to be firm with young gels, otherwise they take advantage of you. Young gels are clever. They aren’t all like you, dear.’ She paused and looked at me for a moment, then carried on.

  ‘Of course I teach maths now for fun. At the Gels’ School they all did very well. Mathematics then was pure, good and hard. Mathematics was difficult. Proper fractions, not these babyish things they ask for now … These scones are lovely! Are they home-made? No? Well never mind. My daughter always makes lovely fluffy fresh scones, fresh and fluffy as a baker’s hat. Now, we can eat our scones and think about fractions. You should never stop thinking about mathematics. See this scone, for example. I’ll cut it in two, or half; and then I cut that two into another two, and we have four parts, or quarters. And then again … This is getting a bit tricky, isn’t it dear? Can’t your mother make slightly larger scones?’

  Mrs Stapley looked down at the crumbly mess on her plate and shook her head. ‘Oh dear. Well, we’ll have to manage with what we have. Cut those four parts into halves again and you have … Well, you have a bit of a mess really, but if the scone were larger … It doesn’t take much to make them larger, you know. You should tell your mother just to make a little more room on the baking tray. The whole point of a scone is to pile up as much jam and cream as possible. At the Gels’ School we had a cream tea every Friday afternoon after hockey. Cook made them nice and fat and fluffy, like a duck’s bottom.’

  Mrs Stapley spent most of her time cutting up scones. She sat beneath the dangling chandelier, which she occasionally addressed with a butter knife, and cut up scones. Each scone was cut into four parts and carefully covered with butter. Each part was then safely tucked away inside her mouth. A long pause followed between each mouthful. But she always came back to the same point: how many spoonfuls of jam were needed to cover two scones, and how many knifeloads of butter.

  ‘Now, I think you should only have a fraction of what I have – two to one, don’t you think? What is two to one of four, Sally?’

  A lot more for you, I thought, and a lot more crumbs on your side of the table. Longer for you to eat, less time for doing maths. But I don’t mind. I hate maths.

  ——————————

  Major Stapley came once a week, on Thursday, to teach me Shakespeare and English history. Mum always made a big fuss around the major arriving.

  ‘The major is here, Sally. Hurry up. Sit up nicely. Don’t slouch, and remember to hold your shoulders back and breathe deeply. Don’t mumble! The major told me he didn’t think you were engaging very well last time. You really must concentrate. There’s no excuse for not being able to learn a few lines off by heart. We had to learn heaps of Shakespeare when I was at school – whole scenes. For goodness’ sake, make an effort! None of this is free, you know!’

  But the major’s Shakespeare was for boys, not girls, and Mum didn’t understand that I wanted to learn more of Viola’s speeches, or Titania’s, Queen of the Fairies. Twelfth Night was set by the sea and A Midsummer Night’s Dream was full of flowers and fairies. I liked Viola’s slow, melancholy speeches. I liked the sound of Puck warning of the arrival of Oberon:

  The King doth keep his revels here to-night;

  Take heed the Queen come not within his sight;

/>   For Oberon is passing fell and wrath …

  But the major only wanted me to read Henry V. Henry, he told me, was England, and Henry was magnificent!

  I dreaded the shuffling sound of the major on the stone steps, the rat-a-tat on the door and the beaky nose poking round the corner of the hall.

  ‘You must stand to attention when he comes in, Sally,’ Mum said. ‘Make sure you stand up straight and salute him.’

  Why should I? We weren’t in the army. There wasn’t a soldier in sight, and no amount of reciting of Henry V was going to bring troops marching into our front room.

  But Major Stapley wanted us to fill our hearts and lungs with the sound of English kings charging over the top of English hills; the cries of English soldiers facing down the French. He wanted to make soldiers of us, but I kept saluting the wrong way.

  ‘Brutes. The French are absolute brutes. Crude souls and turncoats,’ the major barked.

  I didn’t know how you knew whether someone had a crude soul or not, unless you cut them open. How did you even begin to find someone’s soul?

  ‘Right! Let’s begin! Take a deep breath and look out towards your troops. Timing is everything in battle, as it is in Shakespeare. Iambic pentameter should sound like walking or marching. Confront those lines aggressively. You are about to face your enemy. Quick march … and charge!’

  I stood with my feet squirming on the carpet and began to tremble. The words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t move. The French were going to get away with murder at this rate. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Once more unto the breach, dear ones, once more, once more, once more.’

  ‘Start again, and count your “once more”s. One at the beginning and one at the end. Imagine you are marching through marshy fields and meadows, one-two-three, one-two-three, swinging your arms and beaming with the joy of your homeland. Remember, you are a young king prepared to give your life for your country, a young king who knows he is also God-on-earth. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!” Ka-ta! Now stride forth with your arm raised and imagine you are plunging a sword into the breast of a French brute, a French beast. Ka-ta, Ka-ta Ka-ta-ta-ta!’ the major barked as he rose unsteadily to his feet and plunged an imaginary sword through my school skirt.