Girl With Dove

by Sally Bayley

  To fester is to stay indoors all day with no possibility of a walk. To fester is to peer through the downstairs front-room window and wonder why no one ever came up the steps. To fester is to retreat inside dark spaces, the cellar, the bathroom, my mum’s bedroom, the downstairs kitchen.

  To fester is to feel shame, and I did. I felt ashamed of my house, I felt ashamed of us and of what we were hiding: the damp and the fury and the filth; the dirty past; Poor Sue, her body tumbling down the stairs, behind the locked door; the door at the top of the stairs; the white door that closed us off, the door that sealed us off.

  And seals, Mum says, are hard to break. You need brute force, a strong wrist. You need to break through the trapped air, the vacuum, that space where no one goes. In order to break the seal you have to first swallow hard and make your best fist.

  That’s why leaving anywhere you’ve been all your life is so hard, breaking open the seal. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like getting rid of a big lump that has been stuck in your throat for years, that apple, Adam’s apple, the apple that got stuck in his throat right at the beginning, when everything went wrong, when Eve heeded the Serpent’s wicked words and went behind Adam’s back like a sneaky little devil without even washing her hands first, said John Reed to Jane Eyre as he slapped her. Leaving is like that: it’s getting a big slap on your face and a hard knock on your head. It’s John Reed knocking Jane Eyre sideways and pushing her onto the floor, then snatching her book from her hands, her book of birds, Bewick’s Book of Birds, you beast, you rotten beast, you filthy rotten beast, give it back, give it back now! Send her away, Mama! Send her away! Lock her up, Mama! Lock her up! She’s filth. Pure filth.

  When I found myself on the kitchen carpet I knew it was the end: the end of everything. I had broken through the white door and fallen down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs my aunt was waiting to cover my body with a white sheet. Sometime after nightfall she would bury me at the bottom of the garden along with all the other lost souls.

  And I knew the moment my aunt got down on her knees and put her hands together that it was over, because she’d begun to pray, and her praying was dark and dreadful. The sounds were hard and sharp and stuck in her throat. She was cawing. ‘Cri-Cri-Cri-Cri.’ Cri-de-ker, kri-de-ker, kri-de-ker. My aunt was turning into a bird, a crow, a big black crow with a shiny head and a sharp beak and a neck that swivelled towards me and she opened her beak and cawed, sharp words, stuck words, words stuck in her throat, bits of apple covered in skin, my skin. My aunt was ripping at my skin with her sharp beak and all the time she was cawing sharp sounds, like knives. She was peeling her apple, she was taking the apple out from her throat where it was stuck and she was pushing it down my throat: her words, her sounds, her sharp knife, her arrows of God.

  ——————————

  Five o’ clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed … I was to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates at six a.m.

  (Jane Eyre)

  A few days later an ambulance came and took me away. Two men picked me up and carried me off as though I weighed nothing at all. They laid me on a white stretcher as if I was one of the birds Washington (my cat) had caught in his mouth and mauled at. They were nice men. They spoke to me as though everything was normal, this carrying out of bodies, dead or alive, for a nice trip to the seaside.

  But I knew I was being carried away to Coventry in an ambulance. I lay back and listened.

  ‘Lie back now, dear, and feel the sun on your face. This one’s nice and comfy, not too bumpy. Good suspension. Not like the other one. It rattled the bones something awful.’

  ‘What sort of place is this, then, Jim? Ever heard of it?’

  ‘No idea, mate. Never heard of it. A kids’ home, I think. You know, for if they’re in a spot of trouble.’

  ‘What do they do with them there, then?’

  ‘No idea, mate. No idea. Poor little buggers.’

  ——————————

  ‘She came to me from the orphanage,’ Miss Marple tells Inspector Neele. ‘Gladys Martin came to me from St Faith’s. She was a poor little thing. Easily led. Gladys was so easily taken in. She had no family you see, Inspector, and a girl with no living relations is a poor thing indeed. It makes you very vulnerable. Gladys was desperate for someone to tell her what to do. She was always hiding things, things about her past, things she felt ashamed of … her best friend Sue was like that, Sue Blunt. Sue was another poor thing. Completely taken in by religion.’

  Miss Marple suddenly stopped for a moment and looked out the window at the grey sky. The birds were gathering in clumps on the trees. She turned back to the inspector, who was drumming his fingers on the desk and looking rather puzzled. The name Sue Blunt, he thought, rang faint bells. But the old lady hadn’t finished.

  ‘Religion can cover a lot of holes, Inspector. It promises a lot of things. New life, a whole new life, and if your life here on earth isn’t up to much, well, for a girl like Sue Blunt, that can be very alluring.’

  30

  Colwood

  The night passed rapidly. I was too tired even to dream; I only awoke once to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain fall in torrents … when I again unclosed my eyes, a loud bell was ringing; the girls were up and dressing; day had not yet begun to dawn, and a rushlight or two burned in the room. I too rose reluctantly; it was bitter cold, and I dressed as well as I could for shivering.

  (Jane Eyre)

  By the time I got to Colwood I knew that feeling is what makes you ill, too much feeling. Feeling is what made Mum lie in bed all day; feeling is what made my aunt scream and shout; feeling is what made Jane Eyre run away from Thornfield on her wedding night; feeling is what kept Mr Rochester with his head in his hands locked up in the library with no fire lit.

  Feeling is what led me to Colwood. I didn’t stay at Colwood for as long as Jane stays at Lowood School (half her young life at least), but it was months, and in the end, years. After a while I lost count. In between there were other places, other homes that weren’t homes, other Thornfields and Gateshead Halls with granite outlooks and gloomy clouds; places in which there was never a possibility of taking a walk that day or any other. But I don’t like to think about it too much, because none of those places was suitable for a girl like Jane Eyre.

  Colwood was a place of lost days, days that existed only inside doctors’ notes. And those sorts of notes never read well. How could they? Outside of books, nothing much happens. Most of life is boring, which is why you have to make some of it up.

  When I think of Colwood I remember nothing except the ringing of the bell and the early-morning feel of cold linoleum on my feet. And then I see the black bars at the window. It’s hard to describe how it feels to live behind closed windows, with barely a hint of wind or air, with nothing fresh hitting your cheek. No sharp sting. Nothing real or alive or racing. Life without a heartbeat.

  ——————————

  Every morning at 7.30 a bell rang to wake us up. Soon after, someone began yelling. That was the nurse, the nurse who wore squeaky shoes and always said the same thing over and over again: ‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine, into the shower, quick, hop, you morning beauties, breakfast at eight, you know the routine.’

  Nurses like to keep routines. They like to keep notes; and keeping notes, I realised, is quite dull, unless you notice very particular things and then use precisely the right words.

  The nurse: who sometimes was a man with thinning hair and sometimes a woman with blonde hair and a ponytail, and sometimes black and called Janet. I gave them all words, these nurses who weren’t nurses (because nurses always wear uniform). The nurse with thinning hair, the man that is, I would say that he was disconsolate (he could not be consoled or comforted; he didn’t like life or living). He was like Mr Rochester after Jane leaves him, all stooped
over and without his hat on. Jane Eyre is never disconsolate, except perhaps when she is wandering over the heath looking for some shelter. Miss Marple isn’t disconsolate. She’s lived too long for that.

  The nurse with the blonde ponytail was cheerful, and cheerful people always make you feel better. She was cheerful even inside Colwood because she liked children and teenagers and because, I think, she had just decided to be that way. Cheerful people have decided that being cheerful is a good way to be. She walked down the dark corridor at 7.30 a.m. and her ponytail swung and her hips moved slightly left to right, and I thought she looked like a cheerful pony trotting around her pen. Our pen.

  The black nurse was difficult. It’s hard to give her only one word. She needed more. She was bitter on the outside like a sharp fruit – a tangy orange – which she peeled every morning at breakfast. Then she was slow and serene. Deliberate. That is a good word for Janet. She was slow and deliberate, like Janet from my first reading book, but not Janet, the girl with blonde hair I never really liked, but the words on the page about Janet. Those words were slow and deliberate because they were meant to help us read, but I found them boring because they were always the same words. Because Janet inside the book was always predictable.

  Janet in real life wasn’t boring, she was interesting, intriguing, and sometimes she was frightening. It was the way she said things and then did them, with no hesitation. When I wanted to eat an apple instead of a banana she told me that I had no choice except the banana. She said it just like that. ‘There is no choice.’ I couldn’t tell her that I wanted to eat an apple because they are crisp and refreshing, like drinking sweet water, and that apples also clean your teeth. I also didn’t want to eat a banana just then because they made me miss James and the Bahamas, but above all because my aunt had made me eat a banana one morning by force.

  ——————————

  I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened. ‘Boh! Madam Mope!’ cried the voice of John Reed.

  (Jane Eyre)

  That morning had been dark with storm clouds, and when I looked out the window I knew there was no possibility of taking a walk that day. I had been grounded and spent the morning in my room. That morning I feared nothing but interruption, which soon and inexorably came. After an hour or so, after the house had become still and quiet, after the school bell had rung, I heard the door open and someone push past the sticky door handle. I saw a shadow fall across the net curtains.

  My aunt was in the room. I hid beneath my covers with a book over my head hoping that the pages would turn into wings.

  ‘If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,’ said Bessie. ‘Miss Abbot, lend me your garters. She will break mine directly.’ My aunt didn’t tie me down, but after a while, after some polite speaking and cajoling, after the slow run-up, the careful unpeeling, the slow and deliberate movement of hands, my aunt put her hands on my mouth and forced it open. She stuffed the banana in, and when I felt its sweet soggy wet taste against my teeth, the teeth I pulled down like bars, I spat it out and it fell to the ground and I looked down at it lying on the carpet, as though it were my worst enemy, because it came from my aunt, and for no other reason.

  I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and I resisted all the way. And as I resisted, I thought of James and his dad and the bananas they shipped over from the Bahamas falling to the bottom of the sea, because sometimes bananas sink, especially if there is a storm over the Caribbean and the sailors are all sick. Then, inexorably, without any doubt at all, the bananas and the sailors and the entire ship are drowned by the dark-eyed waves.

  My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings: someone near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down – I uttered a wild, involuntary cry.

  (Jane Eyre)

  ——————————

  As a general rule, I don’t think you should do anything by force. If you do, it is bound to breed resentment or hate or illness; you are sure to cause a scene, produce a wild, involuntary cry. But none of this bothered Janet, the black nurse, whose family once came from Jamaica. I first met Janet the day she came into my dormitory and put her cold clammy hands on me and asked me to strip so she could insert something into me from behind. I first met Janet the day she asked me to lie down on the bed inside my dormitory, the room I slept in with three walls, not four, so you couldn’t really call it a room – perhaps a space. A room is closed off and private; there are no prying eyes; there is a door. Our dormitories were made only for prying and peeking and listening in because we were observed from dawn to midnight, from midnight to dawn. In our dormitories, we were strange wild seafowl from solitary promontories whose habits had to be noted down and known. So there were bars on the window to keep us from flying off. Bars locked us in night and day, day and night. I never once saw the moon from my dormitory window, nor the sun. The God of Wind and Rain, the Sun and the Stars, was nowhere to be seen. ‘Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.’

  I first met Janet the day she walked into my dormitory and told me things about my body, private things, things that should never be said out loud. She said them with such calm conviction that there was no questioning her. Janet didn’t like cavillers or questioners, and so there was no possibility of further enquiry. I simply consented. I consented against my will because with Janet there was never any shouting and there was never any choice. Janet was the calm after the storm, but with Janet you never even saw the storm. By the time Janet arrived the storm had been and gone. All that remained were a few spare facts, the facts of life, the physical facts, because Janet only ever spoke about physical things. She never discussed psychology much. Psychology was like a storm; it soon passes over. But when Janet spoke about bodies, well, these were just basic facts – like the fact that you can’t buy strawberries in winter and that celery can be eaten both cooked and raw. If you do eat it raw, it is better with salt, but too much salt will ruin it.

  Janet was someone to be afraid of because she never gave much away. People like that are always frightening, you might say troubling or disconcerting. You can’t get in. The latch is always down. Janet didn’t let you ask questions, and for someone like me that was a very hard thing. Janet refused questions. All she would talk about was food, what food was good for you and what wasn’t, while she slowly peeled her orange in front of you and expected you to wait for her. There was no getting around Janet. She had seen it all before, the cavillers and questioners, the Caribbean storms, the shipwrecks.

  Janet was no Bertha Mason, though they came from the same place. With Janet, there was a lot of history, but I was never allowed to know it. Her history was shut away as tightly as the air inside Colwood. Janet was an air-sealed casket. She had been shipped overseas years ago and she was never coming back.

  But deep down I knew that Janet was also just tired. She was desultory, that was another word for her: fatigued, worn out, spent, indifferent, too calm for words. Because Janet had given up on most words. She hated explanations. Those weren’t needed. Not now. It was too late. Better to say as little as possible. Just state the facts, calmly and slowly, and the world will keep turning with you.

  And the facts were these: that Janet had other children to care for, not us. We were not her main concern, not now, not ever. Janet had other burdens to bear, which is why she was so deliberate about everything she did. Her heart and mind were elsewhere, back in Jamaica with her family, singing to the low moon. In Jamaica, Janet had an ageing mother slowly climbing the walls, or a lover dying in a high room.

  31

  An Angry Goblin’s Cell

  One night I had been awakened by her yells – (since the medical profession had pronounced her mad, she had
of course been shut up) – it was a fiery West-Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates: being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window.

  (Jane Eyre)

  One night in Colwood I had a dream. It’s a dream I had had before and have had several times since. In my dream, I see Poor Sue clinging like a lizard to a windowpane. The window is hot and sweaty and the glass is dark. Pressed to the pane I see a pair of beady eyes and a squashed nose. She has no hair. Her fur is gone and her eyes are bulging, so full of blood they are about to burst.

  Behind her sits a woman in a white veil. The veil covers the woman’s mouth, but her mouth is moving. The veil is going inside her mouth and the woman is chewing the veil. Her teeth are cutting through the white linen. Her tongue is moving as fast as a serpent’s tongue and the tongue is getting longer and longer and licking up the air.

  And on the air are black flies, hundreds and hundreds of flies, and the flies are dying. They are dying on top of the serpent’s tongue, black flies rolling over on their wings and crushing themselves to death. And there is the smell of something bad, the stench of a corpse, and the corpse is rotting. The corpse is rotting beneath the window, at the bottom of the garden, where Verity lay. And in my dream, I watch the lizard and it crawls out of the window and along the garden path, across the sun-parched grass on the lawn, towards the dark soil around the rubbish bins that hasn’t seen water since that hot summer, long ago, when they say old people fell fainting from windows with the heat.