‘No, but the nuns are intriguing. Brides of Christ,’ I said.
‘Don’t you think it’s ghoulish the way they wear wedding rings?’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘They have given themselves up for something greater, bigger than themselves. I admire that.’
What was I trying to tell her? That I believed in angels that floated above us and a fiery hell down below? I don’t think so. It was something else.
‘It’s all about suffering,’ said Victoria. ‘It’s not the romantics who invented that idea, it was Catholics. You can’t have pleasure without pain. It’s not real if your palms haven’t been nailed to the cross.’
She had turned on her side now to face me and was leaning on her elbows. I could see Mr Lavelle over her head, standing at the steps to the entrance. He was talking to Helen. A committee to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the school had been recently set up and he was the nominated teacher. A popular choice. Helen was more animated than usual, her arms gesturing, her cloak and red hair blowing in the breeze.
‘I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in love,’ I said, lying back.
We were to have a week’s holiday from school for Halloween. My mother had asked if I would come stay with her for a few days. A part of me wanted to go, the other part felt guilty. Dad would be alone. Left behind. I felt resentful at having to make the choice.
‘Really?’ said Victoria.
‘No, they are both myths. They make people feel better about themselves for a while. It’s that whole opium for the masses thing,’ I answered, looking at the sky. ‘I might become a socialist, actually.’
I said things then just to catch her attention.
Victoria laughed and, leaning over me, pulled my hair back from my face the way she sometimes did, like she had to see all of me. Nothing could be concealed. I held my breath at her touch and looked at her. Her eyes were large and darker, navy in the fading light.
‘I could never be a socialist; it means you have to admit you are the same as everyone else. You couldn’t do it either,’ she said.
I felt like we had known each other all our lives. Time had distorted for us, was compressing the gaps and distance of the past. I dreaded the next week apart from her.
She pulled away and sat up, looking out to the coast.
Gone.
‘And that’s why it fails,’ I said. ‘Everyone wants to have something else, be something more than the person beside them. The curse of human nature.’
The need to be seen.
‘Last year I asked if we could get a theologian to visit the school,’ she said, ‘to ask what happened to all the people who died before Jesus lived. They didn’t know they were leading sinful lives, like he hadn’t arrived on earth yet to tell them. So it seems to me they had an unfair disadvantage. They knew no better and where’s the mercy in that?’ she said.
Her voice was sad; melancholy rose in her.
I sat up. The wind had grown stronger, and large, thick, grey clouds were moving across the sky. Victoria’s back looked thin and narrow. She pulled her jumper around her shoulders.
‘Weren’t there all those prophets, though, with burning bushes? Weren’t they the ones spreading God’s word before he came?’ I said, trying to coax her back.
I could picture all those pre-Jesus sinners and Victoria inspecting them, pondering their lack of knowledge, the dark fate that awaited them. The fate that only she knew of. No mercy in the Old Testament.
‘Oh, Moses, I forgot about him.’ She paused for a second. ‘Anyway the school sent a letter home – “. . . we feel it is our duty to inform you that your daughter has been disrupting the class, we welcome open debate but she is asking inappropriate questions. . .” Like curiosity is a disease.’
I laughed; she was making it up. They were far too diplomatic and clever to write that.
‘I mean, at least have some intellectual might behind your teachings; like even one day a week, a theologian would be good, a part-time one, to take questions. . .’ She had turned back to me as she said this and noticed Mr Lavelle and Helen.
‘They are together a lot these days,’ she said.
She was frowning as she spoke.
I pulled the sleeves of my jumper down slightly. They were already frayed and I wondered how I’d managed that only two months in. The clouds had thickened over our heads and it felt like it would rain this evening.
‘He has to put up with her these days. He probably feels sorry for her; her father is all over the papers and the nuns are running around after her, worrying she will have some kind of a breakdown with the shame. Let’s head in anyway,’ I said.
But neither of us moved. We sat in silence for a moment, watching them.
‘Why don’t you believe in love?’ she asked, still staring at them.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered, ‘maybe I can’t believe in something I’ve never seen.’
An image of my parents sitting in silence at the kitchen table came into my head, suitcases in the hall. For a second I felt cold and fully believed what I was saying. Love seemed like a trick. You won or were outwitted by it. You thought it was there, and then it wasn’t.
‘Like doubting Thomas. . .’ Victoria answered, her voice fainter. ‘But you can’t see it, you feel it.’
She put her hand over her heart.
I didn’t respond, just lay down on my back again looking at the tops of the tallest trees and the leaves that were dying, falling back to the earth.
She spoke the truth. A part of me knew that, even then.
‘Helen is in love with him, you know,’ she said.
I waited for the ironic comment to follow. But it didn’t come.
I stayed lying down but turned on my side to look at her.
‘We did this séance thing with a Ouija board last year after the Christmas concert. A few of us stayed back behind the stage when all the parents had gone for drinks. Someone had stolen a bottle of wine and some brandy. We were all drinking. Anyway, you had to get the planchette to move with the power of your thoughts and spell out a name. For ages nothing happened, everyone was half-drunk anyway and overtired from the concert, kind of giddy and taking the piss out of it.’
As she spoke her gaze did not move from Helen and Mr Lavelle.
‘Then a few of the lights in the Hall that had been left on started to flicker. Someone went to check and look around the curtain on the stage. We thought maybe one of the teachers had come back to start tidying up or switch things off. But the Hall was empty, with this light in the middle just going on and off. The mood of everyone changed after that. I think we all wanted to leave but no one wanted to be the big pussy and say it. We stopped laughing, closed our eyes and held hands in silence. It was Helen’s turn next and when she did it, it spelled out his name. Clear as anything. She went all red. Like the colour of her appalling hair.’ Victoria turned her head to me as she finished.
Mr Lavelle was holding Helen by the arm. The way he did.
‘But that’s how you communicate with the dead; if it spelled out his name it meant he was dead, or going to die or something. And not that it means that either, it’s just like a joke,’ I said.
Victoria looked tired, like her usual glow and energy had been diminished, weakened. I wanted to reach for her, protect her from her thoughts.
‘No, it means that they have a connection, like the spirit world was trying to bring them together,’ she said, ‘and you weren’t there, you didn’t see her face. Like her biggest and darkest secret had just come out.’
‘Did anyone say anything when it happened?’ I asked.
‘No, she is too powerful to make jokes about,’ she said.
‘They all love him,’ I said, ‘he’s the most popular teacher here. It doesn’t make any difference anyway what she feels. He just likes the attention; it doesn’t mean anything.’
Victoria looked at me; she was flushed, irritated. I had said something that was not
allowed.
‘He sketched her, you know, just before we broke for summer,’ she replied. ‘He even told me about it.’
She looked at me intensely as she spoke, and I felt for the first time a defiance in her, of me and my disbelief.
‘Have you seen it?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘She’s lying on the couch in the summer house. . . naked.’
She spat out the last word.
I looked away to Mr Lavelle and Helen on the steps and let Victoria’s words sink in for a moment. I did not know what to say. I felt a bit like I had the first day I met her, as if all my words carried weight and the future of our friendship would be determined by my answer. I felt my mind crawl inwards to excuse him and find justification, something, anything that would lessen her burden. And his.
‘What did he say when he showed it to you?’ I asked, turning back to her.
‘He said he needed a model and she had helped him out, like it was nothing. He was all light and breezy, you know what he’s like,’ she said. ‘And I believed him. I mean, why wouldn’t I? He’s an artist; the body is just something for a canvas, his work.’
She was watching them again. Helen was laughing like the greatest joke ever had just been shared.
‘I didn’t want to seem petty and bourgeois.’
She shook her head slightly as she spoke.
‘Except lately. . . it just seems like it’s all bullshit. He’s with her all the time.’
Mr Lavelle had left Helen now and walked over to his car. He bent to touch something on the wheel and as he did so he noticed us and waved. He was wearing a tweed jacket that looked too large for him.
I responded with a wave but Victoria didn’t; she just stared at him, motionless. He didn’t open the car door and for a second I thought he looked nervous, even afraid.
‘He won’t dare come over,’ she said, her face paler now and her voice flat.
He didn’t walk over. Instead, he got into his car and we watched as he drove out through the gates.
‘Where does he go in the evening, where does he live?’ I asked, getting to my feet.
My skirt felt damp. These afternoons in the grass would be ending soon. Autumn was no longer a cautious visitor to the gardens.
‘In the village. There is a lodge house on the corner, near the pub,’ she answered.
She remained sitting cross-legged and in no hurry to join me. She played with a long piece of grass as she spoke.
‘It’s painted a very pale pink. There is honeysuckle growing around the door, and a small table and chairs on the path outside. Sometimes there are flowers on the table, in a blue jug, and he leaves his boots outside the front door. It is how you know he’s there. The sign that he’s home.’
When she finished speaking she looked up, not at me, but at the cloud of dust left behind by his car.
And I felt cold, as if winter had arrived.
Chapter Fifteen
The committee meeting was in one of the attic rooms. I hadn’t been to this level of the house before. A small rope usually hung across the narrow stairwell indicating it was off limits. I climbed the steps, the sounds of the school below becoming muffled and distant.
Mr Lavelle and Helen were already seated in one of the rooms off the hallway, as was one of the Vestal Virgins. Helen had a clipboard in front of her. The other girl was twirling her long fair hair and looked bored.
The space was empty of furniture except for a round table in the centre of the room and some decaying chests in the corner. A faded zebra skin hung on the wall. The windows were smaller than downstairs and it was warmer, stuffy compared to the chill of the rest of the house. The only light came from a small lamp on the floor under one of the eaves.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ Mr Lavelle said, smiling and pointing to a chair.
‘Is anyone else coming?’ I asked, standing at the entrance, unsure as to whether to close the door.
He didn’t answer, just shook his head and shuffled some papers on the desk.
Helen barely looked up as I sat down. She was scribbling furiously.
‘Nice pen, Helen,’ I said, smiling at her.
Mr Lavelle moved his chair an inch further back from the table, put his hands behind his neck, spreading himself wide.
Helen lifted her head to me, ice in her grey, pale eyes.
‘Well, Louisa, we know you have only been in Temple House for two months now but to celebrate the school’s fiftieth anniversary, we are creating a book that will gather as many student experiences as possible,’ he said, ‘and we would like you, as one of our new scholarship students, to contribute.’
He looked at Helen as he finished. She nodded her head at him and smiled sweetly.
‘I would be happy to do that,’ I said.
He made you want to please him, even now when an air of fake cheeriness hung around his words.
A vague look of surprise crossed Helen’s face. She thought I would say no.
The girl beside her leaned forward on to the table, putting her arms under her chin as if the whole conversation was exhausting.
‘That is super news,’ he said. ‘I thought possibly you might write about our art classes, our new way of learning, experiencing art and how it is different from your last school, maybe something about the skull project we worked on? You could elaborate further on your essay.’
Helen breathed in sharply and laid her pen down.
Mr Lavelle gave her an anxious, sideways glance.
‘If you are sure, I could, I could do that. . .’ I said, looking from one to the other.
‘It’s up to you, Louisa, what subject you write about – within reason, obviously,’ Helen said.
‘We would, however, like to showcase how Temple House is moving with the times, opening its doors to. . .’ she paused. ‘New people. Like you.’
She spoke like I was diseased.
The other girl closed her eyes for a second.
‘I am honoured to be singled out,’ I said, and gave Mr Lavelle my biggest smile.
‘Indeed,’ Helen said, squeezing her pen and briefly looking at him to check his expression.
‘It’s settled then,’ said Mr Lavelle, rubbing his hands together.
Helen flicked her hair over her shoulder, impatient for my departure.
‘We are getting it professionally printed,’ said the other girl, raising herself slowly from the table and then holding her nails out to the low light. Checking for any imperfections.
‘Yes,’ said Helen.
‘Thrilling,’ I responded.
‘So there will be deadlines, which have to be met,’ said Helen, her eyebrows raised.
‘Yes, they have to be met,’ said her sidekick, ‘otherwise, it’s really expensive.’
‘I get that,’ I said.
We all looked at each other in silence for a second.
‘This Friday, Louisa, before we break for Halloween. If you could have it ready then that would be ideal,’ Mr Lavelle said.
He got up then and walked me to the door.
‘Mr Lavelle,’ Helen said.
He turned back to her.
‘There are some other things we need to discuss. We have lots to do,’ she said, her pen tapping on the table.
‘Yes, of course; just walking Louisa out,’ he said.
He closed the door behind us and we stood in the hall. The roof was sloped and he had to stoop.
‘I appreciate this, Louisa; it’s really important to have new voices,’ he said, looking at me.
I smiled at him. He didn’t smell of grass and earth, more of dust. Like he had been locked in the attic. I again had the feeling that he needed something from me.
‘It’s no problem,’ I said.
He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed it gently. As if he was in pain.
‘Are you okay?’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, just, you know, lots to do, little time,’ he said, raising his arm against the door frame beside my head and leaning f
orward towards me.
I felt small beside him.
‘Victoria, is she. . .’ His words hung there, his eyes locked on me.
I said nothing and looked at the wallpaper. There were brown stains in the places where the walls met the ceiling. I didn’t want to talk about her. The knowledge that she had been to his house made me nervous.
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’ He paused, looking down to the floor and kicking the rise in the carpet with his foot. ‘Another time.’
He shrugged his shoulders and I felt like I had disappointed him. Like there was a part of me he couldn’t reach, even if he wanted to.
There was laughter from Helen and the other girl to greet him when he re-entered the room, as if he had been gone months.
I walked down the narrow stairs. It was almost seven and I had a chemistry test the next morning that I needed to study for. Victoria was sitting in the half-light on the floor outside her room. She had laid out some playing cards in a semicircle around her.
‘Where were you?’ she said, looking up.
‘The attic, weirdly, with Helen. I have been roped into writing for the anniversary book,’ I said. ‘Can you imagine?’
‘Was he there?’ she said; her eyes looked sharp and glassy.
‘Yes, of course; he’s on the committee,’ I said.
She collected the cards and got to her feet, turning to push open her bedroom door.
I touched her shoulder. It felt brittle and fragile.
‘There is nothing between them, him and Helen,’ I said.
She turned back to face me. Her hair was wet and a tear rolled down her cheek.
‘There can’t be,’ she said, leaning in and whispering in my ear, ‘or I will rip her heart out.’
It felt like a slap.
Before I could answer, she was gone. The door slammed behind her.
The thin fluorescent light in the hallway switched on suddenly over my head. The signal that night-time was here and study and sleep was due.
I walked to my room, thinking of Victoria, feeling things for her I was not sure I fully understood.
Chapter Sixteen
The purpose of art class in Temple House is to expose us as students not to the surface, but to what lies beneath. We explore the motivations of not just the artist we are studying, but ourselves and our interpretations of their work. It is radical and exciting to uncover one’s own deepest and often hidden fear and anxiety when observing an artwork. We are faced with ourselves and in this manner come closer to the truth. The truth of the artist and our own self.
The Temple House Vanishing Page 10