The Temple House Vanishing

by Rachel Donohue

  But I hadn’t been in love. My own restless nights in the narrow school bed returned to me.

  She was foolish to wait for Mr Lavelle; maybe that was why he had not discouraged Helen. He had become frustrated with the chaste and honourable Victoria and been distracted by Helen and her white skin. And yet it was Victoria who talked so dismissively of the nuns, and their virginal marriages with the Lord, the gold marriage bands with the Holy Spirit. While I thought something about their union was magnificent, a pure belief in the existence of a perfect other, a giving of yourself to the unknown.

  She didn’t make sense to me sometimes.

  ‘There is no class today, Louisa.’

  Mr Lavelle was standing at the door. He had some wood under his arm for the stove and looked vaguely puzzled by my being there.

  ‘I posted a notice on the board,’ he said, bending down to drop the logs beside the stove. A few of them tumbled across the floor.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t see it, I didn’t know,’ I answered, getting up from the couch and going to help him.

  We stacked the stray logs. He smelled of earth and cold air.

  ‘Where is Victoria? I haven’t seen her today,’ he asked, starting to light the fire.

  ‘I don’t know, she must be sick,’ I said, gathering up my sketchpad.

  ‘Did you enjoy the party at her house?’ he asked, standing up and rubbing his hair. He walked to the kettle and flicked it on.

  ‘Yes, I did.’ I couldn’t think of what to say. ‘Her house is very grand.’

  He smiled at me as he held the teabag in his hand. He looked tired, with large dark circles under his eyes.

  ‘You are always so refreshing, Louisa, when you do speak,’ he said. ‘I gave Victoria some extra lessons, tutorials last summer, that’s why her mother invited me along. I know it’s always vaguely disconcerting to see a teacher outside of school. Civilian life and all that.’

  He poured the boiled water from the kettle into the mug.

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ I asked. ‘The party?’

  In my head I saw him on the leather armchair, Helen at his feet.

  ‘In a way,’ he answered, stirring the tea. ‘These things are to be endured.’

  I nodded. There was a weariness in his voice. He sat down on the chair.

  ‘I guess it’s not your world. And I am sure it can’t have been easy these past months. It’s its own universe here,’ he said, looking at me.

  ‘It’s different, that’s all. I don’t try and fit in. That’s not who I am. And Victoria has been great, showing me how to. . .’ I stopped.

  What had she been showing me? Irony, passion, hunger.

  Love.

  ‘Victoria, she. . . she gets very passionate, about people,’ he said, ‘when she believes in someone. It’s happened before.’

  Please don’t talk about the other girl. Please.

  ‘Last year. There was a girl she was close to but she had to leave the school,’ he said.

  The one from before.

  He stood up, took a sip from the mug of tea; I could feel his eyes on me.

  ‘Victoria was distraught, for a while,’ he said.

  ‘She is a very authentic and intense person,’ I answered, still looking down at my sketchpad.

  The empty, unturned pages. I felt embarrassed.

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was solemn and low. ‘I do have a sense of that. And you, what is she to you?’

  I looked up. He smiled at me, gently, eyebrows raised slightly. The sense of him pulling and prodding me to something other. To go further.

  For an instant she was there with us, lounging like a cat on the couch again, like on that first day. The air in the room quivering, re-forming with unspoken expectation.

  Possibility.

  I thought of the reality of her leaving. Of her loving someone else, him.

  ‘I can’t live without her,’ I said.

  I surprised myself. Though I briefly felt relief saying it, announcing it, admitting it. The truth we never spoke. The feelings that drove my shame.

  He touched one or two of the chess pieces, his head down. And he looked sad, older and sadder. I thought about Victoria saying how she felt she had to heal him. I hadn’t understood that before, but watching him that afternoon I sort of did. His elusiveness had slipped into plain listlessness. There was something soft, almost a feline quality about him. He was a man, but not the kind that was very intimidating or forceful. He just wanted to play. I had never really thought about that before. He was beautiful, lyrical and weak.

  He knew now that Victoria held my heart. And nothing would be the same between the three of us. I suddenly wanted to disappear. The desire to be recognized and seen was evaporating. I stood up to leave.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Do you play?’

  He gestured to the board. His eyes were pleading.

  ‘No,’ I answered, shaking my head. ‘I never learned.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘Victoria does. She’s very good, actually. A master, you might say, if she could only focus more.’

  I began to back away from him, towards the door. The room smelled smoky and warm. It no longer felt like a refuge.

  ‘I gave her some lessons. . . last year,’ he went on, staring at the tiny king, queen and pawns on the table. ‘There’s always time. I might set up a chess club – you could join, maybe?’ he said, looking up.

  ‘Aren’t you, won’t you be leav. . .’ I let the words fade away.

  He leaned forward in his chair, resting the mug on the stone floor. It spilled slightly as he did so; a damp patch began to spread out around it. I watched it slowly inching across the ground.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, Louisa. Everything I want is here. . .’ he said, holding his hands out to encompass the room. ‘You too, I think. Everything you want is here. With Victoria. . .’ When he finished, he looked at me closely.

  I didn’t answer but looked away to the fire. The flames starting to ignite. Stuttering and spitting into life.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, turning back to face him. ‘Yes. Everything I want is here.’

  I heard my words. Not elaborate or rich, like Victoria’s, any more.

  I walked out the door. A mist had descended; the trees at the edge of the forest had turned to shadows and vapour. A place to get lost. To run away. To hide from who you were.

  If I could speak to her now, that girl in the twilight, what would I tell her?

  It is possible to fall in love with the first person who sees you.

  And it can turn you to stone.

  I was getting ready for bed when Alice came into the room that night.

  I was hanging up my uniform. She pulled the curtains, I always forgot to do this, and then she sat on the edge of her bed. I knew she had been at one of the meetings for the school concert.

  I ignored her for a minute, which was not unusual. As I climbed into bed she was still sitting on the edge of hers.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked, grabbing my book.

  She turned to me.

  ‘I have just seen something,’ she said.

  The room was shadowy now, with just my small light on. I couldn’t clearly make out her expression.

  ‘A love letter and a poem. All typed up and everything. To Mr Lavelle, from someone in the school,’ she said.

  ‘It’s probably a joke,’ I replied, putting the book back on the bedside locker and pulling the covers more closely around me.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘How did you get it anyway?’ I asked.

  ‘It was in Helen’s locker,’ she said, rubbing her eyes.

  This was not what I expected to hear.

  ‘How odd,’ I said. ‘And Helen showed it to you?’

  ‘And to the other prefects. Yes, of course. Helen has nothing to hide. She was worried someone was starting a poison-pen campaign against us. Lots of people are jealous of us prefects, our positions and our relationships with the teachers,’ she said. ‘Helen was warning us to be
vigilant, someone is obviously trying to get us into trouble.’ She lay down on her bed.

  ‘Of course, yes,’ I said quickly.

  I had to find out what was in the letter, what could be in it. I felt a throb of curiosity and fear in my stomach.

  ‘What did it say, the letter?’ I asked.

  ‘That they are in love and going to run away,’ she said. ‘Also something about a painting, a drawing.’

  I sank further under the covers.

  ‘Sister Ignatius was sent a copy too. Called Helen in this evening,’ she said.

  The throb had turned to a pain.

  ‘There is going to be a major scene of some kind, mark my words,’ she said.

  For a second I saw Victoria in my head, posting anonymous letters from her sickbed, playing games. But then I dismissed the thought. She would never be stupid enough to bring this level of attention on Mr Lavelle. And why would Helen tell the other prefects? Why draw attention to it?

  ‘What will they do – the nuns, I mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, last year there was this man who used to hide naked in the trees down by the gate, a flasher,’ she said, lowering her voice.

  I laughed nervously.

  ‘It’s not funny, he was this complete weirdo, and he was arrested in the end. Anyway, when the nuns found out he was there we had mass every morning at seven thirty for two straight weeks, the long version, and then they had this retreat in the school, with this priest, where we had to talk about passions and not giving in to them. It was excruciating. And no food for the whole day also. A twenty-four-hour fast. I was too tired and hungry to get any study done by the end of it.’

  Passions and not giving in to them.

  ‘It will be so much worse this time,’ she said, shaking her head.

  Alice started getting ready for bed and I turned on to my other side.

  ‘Why did the school get the students to do penance when it was some sick man who was. . .?’ I asked.

  ‘Because, well, because it’s a warning,’ she said.

  A warning of what? That people are fundamentally bad and without control? That they want to do dark things to you in the shadows? And, somehow, you are in the end responsible?

  ‘We’re going to meet later, the prefects, about the letter. I thought I’d better tell you in case you heard me leave after lights out,’ she said. ‘We have to wait till everyone has gone to bed.’

  A midnight conflab in the draughty Hall. Like witches around a cauldron. And Helen, leading the charge, chief amongst hypocrites.

  ‘What can you do now – I mean, if Sister Ignatius has seen the letter and the poem?’ I said, staring at the cracks on the wall beside me.

  ‘Well, Helen says it’s important we stick together, get our story straight and obviously find out who wrote it and is pretending to be Helen,’ she said. ‘It really is slanderous.’

  ‘I think you mean libellous,’ I said. ‘When it’s written down, it’s libellous.’

  I ran my fingers over the uneven wall. The air in the room was damp and the walls had moisture on them.

  ‘Yes, right,’ she said.

  ‘Is Helen upset?’ I asked.

  I imagined the creeping redness on her white neck. The alarm in her pale eyes.

  ‘No, of course not. It’s not from her so she feels very strongly that she will be vindicated. She made it clear to Sister Ignatius that someone was trying to tar her reputation. She also had some things to say about Mr Lavelle to Sister,’ she said.

  ‘What things?’ I said.

  There was something ominous in how Alice had said his name.

  ‘Look, I’m not sure, but you know what he’s like. . . And Helen has been working with him a lot lately with the anniversary stuff. I think he has made her feel uncomfortable. I don’t know.’

  She no longer wanted to confide in me. Her voice had become more distant.

  ‘Does Sister Ignatius believe Helen?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Alice replied. ‘Well, Helen thinks so.’

  Maybe not.

  I reached to turn off the light when I heard her climb into her bed.

  I found it hard to go to sleep. I was waiting for Alice to make her move and disappear off to the Hall. The clock read ten, then half past, but still she stayed where she was. The wind picked up outside, the lights in the hallway went off. A door closed somewhere deep in the house and the black phone in the hall outside the office rang, stopping almost as quickly as it started. And I thought about the letter, what it might have said and whether it was Victoria who wrote it.

  Eventually I must have fallen asleep, for I dreamed. It was of Victoria and this was not unusual, most of my dreams featured her. In this one she was dressed like a pilgrim, a white bonnet on her head. In the distance, on the far-off hills, there were bonfires.

  And the sky was lit up, angry and raging.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  If only our lives were like a book and you could stop and ponder the ideas raised for a moment, turn the pages back and read again. But this time more carefully.

  It would make all the difference.

  Alice was standing over me and the room was dark. Black, blind, dark. She had her torch in her hand and was shining it not quite in my face, but just above my head, on the wall. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and looked at the alarm clock on my bedside locker. It read 3.45 a.m.

  ‘I need you to come with me,’ I heard her say.

  She sounded far away and I wondered for an instant if I was still dreaming. The icy temperature in the room suggested not, as did the slow click of the pipes that ran around the ceiling. The school’s archaic and eerie heating system.

  ‘What’s going on? It’s the middle of the night,’ I mumbled, sitting up more fully.

  The cold air of the room a shock after the warmth of sleep.

  ‘We need you to come,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry but they won’t wait.’

  A point of no return.

  ‘Who won’t wait? I’m not getting up now. We’ll get caught,’ I answered.

  ‘You have to come. It will be worse tomorrow if you don’t, I promise you,’ she said, and her voice was not unkind, but worried.

  I wished I could have made out the expression on her face, even though I had read somewhere people’s voices betray them more. If you want to tell if someone is lying, phone them and ask them the question that requires the truth. It was something about tone and not seeing their eyes. Which it seemed were not windows to the soul. And what was Alice’s tone? Anxious. My mind was still in that place between sleep and wakefulness, the one where you are supposed to have visions and somehow see things as they really are.

  It must be Victoria, I thought, as sleep slipped away; they have found out about her and Mr Lavelle and maybe it was her letter and poem after all. I was awake now.

  I climbed out of bed and dragged on my dressing gown, stumbling over my shoes as I did so. It was so cold in the room I could see my breath. I grabbed my scarf off the back of the door as we left.

  The corridor was silent and lit only by the pale neon light above the door that led to a balcony at the back of the house. Alice had switched off the torch and led the way. We approached Victoria’s room and for a moment I wondered if she would stop there. I thought perhaps Victoria had returned to the school late. And I felt, for some reason, that she would know how to handle this and it would all make a strange kind of sense. We would laugh about it later. But we passed by her door.

  We went down the stairs carefully; the carpet was torn in places and the stairs creaked. At the turn in the Maiden’s Chamber, moonlight was streaming through the stained-glass window, making a red and blue pattern on the floor. It was strangely magical, peaceful even, and I felt like I wanted to stay there a minute. To sink to my knees and trace the outline of the pattern on the floor. The statue of Mary stood on a ledge on the wall. Her eyes were downcast.

  Alice did not turn towards the Hall as I expected. She went towards the back of the h
ouse and the door that led to the walled garden. She opened it gently and we walked outside. The sky was clear and the air cold and fresh, an easterly wind blowing in off the sea. The moon was bright, lighting the path that wound through the now-bare flower and vegetable beds. A fox ran out in the path ahead of us.

  I saw the tension in Alice’s back ease as we walked on silently, as if the oppressive house with its shadows had weighed her down. Bats flew above us, small and darting towards the woods over the high wall. There was the sound of water running as we neared the gate; someone had left the outside tap on. I walked to the wall and turned it off; the ground was soggy. The bucket underneath the tap was overflowing. I could see the moon reflected in the water. Alice stopped for a second. She had got a stone in her shoe and cursed quietly under her breath as she tried to remove it. I turned back and looked towards the house. The fox had returned and stood on the path staring at us. Intruders in his night.

  As we walked on, the summer house, a dim light shining from its windows, came into view.

  The door was open. Alice stood aside and gestured for me to go in. The room was lit by candles and I saw again how romantic a place it was. A refuge in an enchanted forest. And I wished I could have visited here one summer night, just the three of us – me, Victoria and Mr Lavelle. We would have talked, and no one would have fallen in love with anyone else.

  Helen was sitting in his chair, by the stove. She had one of the throws around her shoulders and somehow it only added to the sense of majesty about her. There were no other prefects. I turned back to the door but Alice shook her head and shut it without joining us.

  ‘What is going on, Helen?’ I said.

  I could hear my voice and it didn’t sound right.

  ‘In a way, you should be honoured, Louisa. It’s not everyone who gets to come here after dark.’

  I didn’t answer and I didn’t sit down. I felt safer standing.

  ‘But then maybe I am completely wrong and you do get to come here after dark. Or maybe you visit him in the village?’ She fiddled with her bracelet as she spoke and didn’t look at me, but past me.