‘What are you talking about?’ I said loudly.
‘Quiet, Louisa,’ she said. ‘I thought Alice explained that we found your letter and poem to him? The one that talks about how it felt when he put his mouth to your chest – the flowering of something, I believe? Not exactly a subtle metaphor. We would have expected better from the English ace.’
She gestured to the table, where a piece of paper lay.
I felt like walking over and destroying it. I didn’t want to read it. There was something bad, toxic, within the words.
Helen got up then and walked to the cabinet of curiosities and trailed her fingers slowly across the protruding glass. It was glinting, the candles reflected in it. I thought again about why she told the other prefects of the letter; she could have used her powers of persuasion and just papered over the cracks with Sister Ignatius. She was loved. They believed the things she said.
‘More Mills and Boon than – who is it you like these days? Virginia Woolf, is it?’ she said, turning briefly to face me.
‘I didn’t write him any letter or any poem,’ I said. ‘And I have never been here at night or anywhere else with him.’
‘Did he get you to choose an item?’ she said, touching the cabinet again.
‘Are we here to compare art classes?’ I said as the door behind me opened in the breeze, and I jumped slightly at the sound.
Helen didn’t seem to notice.
‘In a way, yes,’ she answered, opening the cabinet. It was unlocked and I wondered why and how she had a key.
The trees, black shadows, moved in the wind. I closed the door. Alice, who for some reason I thought might be standing guard outside, was nowhere in sight.
When I turned back, Helen had reached in and taken out one of the cloudy jars.
‘You know what’s in here?’ she asked, holding it up to me across the room.
It was Victoria’s heart.
‘He told me it was a human heart,’ she said, ‘all shrivelled up and beating no more.’
She looked lost in thought for a moment, staring at the jar in her hand. And I wondered what else he might have said to her about hearts and how they live, and die. And who gets to hold them.
And how she maybe believed him once.
‘Helen, as much as I find this thrilling, it’s almost four in the morning and we shouldn’t be here,’ I answered. ‘I don’t know anything about a letter or a poem.’
She laid the jar carefully back in the cabinet and closed the door before turning back to me.
‘Louisa, we’ve all seen how you are with him these last few months. The way he watches you. I mean, I can see how flattering it is. I do understand how hard it must have been to resist. I’m sure you wouldn’t really have met anyone like him before. But it’s crossed a line and we are all going to have to pay for it now, which is why it’s become my business.’
Was she jealous of the way he was with us? Did she mean to punish him or just me?
‘I think you must have confused me, Helen, with you. You seemed really cosy with him the other night at Victoria’s house,’ I said. ‘Quite touching.’
She said nothing for a second, her face in half shadow. The door of the cabinet slipped open behind her and hung ajar.
‘I felt like I was interrupting – how would I describe it? Something quite intimate,’ I said.
‘As head girl, I have meetings with the teachers. It comes with the role,’ she said. ‘It’s not exactly unusual and hardly cause for alarm or indeed suspicion.’
I laughed. She looked indignant, her eyes darting and wary.
‘Role, that’s a really interesting way of putting it. Like role model, or maybe just model,’ I said.
Her face did not move. The gaze still now.
‘Because isn’t there some kind of a painting of you, here, actually?’ I pointed to the couch.
‘You don’t know what you are talking about,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘I have tried to warn you against messing with me, with this school, with the way we run things. But you just can’t seem to take it in, can you?’
She moved away from the cabinet and walked slowly towards me, her arms folded tightly across her chest.
‘There is no painting of me. There is no Mr Lavelle and me. What there is, is a cheap slut from the wrong end of town who thinks she can make her way in the world by hanging out with rich kids and sleeping with the first man who shows any interest in her.’
Her voice was defensive, with a hint of nerves. The letter represented as much a danger to her as it did to Victoria or me.
We were face to face. Her eyes looked black and closed off in the dim light of the room. I felt like it was a dream again, and she was something from a tale, a story of warning and menace. Of alchemy. Why did we meet? All the small, tiny decisions taken long ago that lead us to where we are. My ambition, the desire to do better, the sense of my calling.
‘We know you have a good head for facts, Louisa, so you need to repeat that back to me,’ she said. ‘This is your last and only chance.’
As she spoke, the door to the summer house blew open again, more violently this time, and a draught blew out two of the candles above the stove. We were in almost complete darkness, only the moonlight stayed constant and bright. The breeze was ice-cold on my legs. Helen wrapped the throw more tightly around her shoulders, her eyes never moving from me. The cabinet was in shadow now, only an outline in the dark room.
‘You talk such rubbish, Helen. I am not taking the blame for your own – what should we call them – indiscretions,’ I said. ‘I mean, what would all the nuns think of you if they knew? The girl most likely to succeed. . . but at what exactly?’
Find your voice, I said to myself. This is not a dream. Spit out your anger.
But she got there first.
‘I don’t know what Victoria, let alone Mr Lavelle, sees in you. You are nothing, nothing here. One word of your lies about me and they will show you the door. You will be back to the crappy world you came from. No one will believe you if you dare try to pin this letter and poem on me.’
She stood still, staring at me.
‘What there is, is a letter typed by you which at this moment is sitting on the desk in Sister Ignatius’s room. She is going to come down on all of us like a ton of bricks tomorrow morning and Mr Lavelle could be fired or suspended. Admit that you wrote it, tell her you are sorry, get on your knees and possibly you will survive,’ she said.
Mr Lavelle fired. The words were stark.
I saw myself on my knees, but it was not in front of Sister Ignatius. It was Victoria I sank before. I was admitting everything to her, waiting for her hand to fall on my head and let me confess my feelings.
‘They were ready to be disappointed; you were an unknown quantity when they let you and the rest of them in, a social experiment.’
The depth of her dislike of me and all I represented was clear in her tone, a frozen sense of distaste.
Reputations, reputations. What are they made of? I know now they are the lies we tell ourselves and everyone else. One person has many faces. And voices. Is there any truth about any of us? It’s all a game. Charades with shadows and words.
Only the brave ever lift the veil. And face the consequences.
‘Helen, this isn’t even that good a school. There are plenty of other schools. And I will tell them what a weird, fucked-up, living-in-the-1950s hole this is. Where we spend more time saying decades of the rosary and getting our lines straight than actually getting an education. Of course, what makes it really priceless is that amid all the penance and piety, the head girl gets naked for her teacher. All in the name of art. I will make sure everyone remembers your name, and when you meet them at a random college party, you’ll know why they all want to get you a drink,’ I said.
She picked up the piece of paper and shoved it into my hand. It was folded-over, heavy, thick paper.
I struggled to read it in the low light. It was typed, the rows of words close
together.
My eye never leaves you. I see you when you aren’t even here. I trace your journeys and imagine I am there, beside you. I didn’t know I was lonely, until I met you. Everything changed when you came. I am not the way I was and I can’t go back. You unlocked my heart. That night, when you knelt in front of me, in your room. I have not been the same since.
I count down the days till we leave. It will be a new life, together. They cannot, they won’t blame you for it, when they know what we mean to each other. . .
It was from Victoria. I didn’t have to finish it. She could have at least tried to make it sound like something Helen would write. What was she trying to do?
I put it back on the table.
‘I have no idea who wrote this,’ I said. ‘Where is the poem?’
‘In my locker,’ she said. ‘It’s more of the same, morbid and pathetic. As if I would ever write this.’
She picked up the keys that lay on the table.
‘If it’s not from you, is it Victoria’s?’ she said, looking at me.
The bitchiness was gone; it was the first proper question of the whole conversation. She knew as well as I did.
I shook my head. There was no place for truth between us.
My poor, stupid Victoria.
Helen looked briefly up to the ceiling, as if composing herself.
‘I feel nothing but pity for you, Louisa. None of those schools you mentioned would even look at you now, because you can imagine the kind of reference you are going to get if there is any notion that you are planning to run off with a teacher. I called you here to try and give you a warning, but I will let you sink now. And I am going to enjoy it and so will everyone else here.’ She paused. ‘Even Victoria, deep down, because she will get over you, just like Mr Lavelle will. Everyone will survive, except you.’
She spoke with power and assurance. Her place in the world not precarious, like mine.
‘It was in your locker, Helen,’ I said. ‘Explain that.’
‘It was placed there by you, and if not you, Victoria,’ she said. ‘You are both trying to ruin my reputation, and you won’t get away with it. I matter.’
She had mattered. With Mr Lavelle. And Victoria hated her for this.
Helen started to blow out the remaining few candles. The only thin light came from the still-bright moon. The air cold, the door swinging back and forth in the breeze. And if you happened to be passing through the dark woods and saw us in that moment you might have thought we were ghosts. You might have pressed your face to the glass, curious to know what we were and what mysteries we might have held in our hearts, for what would bring two souls here in the middle of the night, but a passion of some sort.
But you would have been wrong. It wasn’t passion that brought us together but lies. And everything really comes back to that.
‘I’m not afraid of you, Helen,’ I said.
I was, though. And she knew it.
I went out ahead of her. I could hear her locking the door of the summer house behind me and I thought about the cabinet, she hadn’t shut the cabinet. I was shivering as I walked back to the gate into the garden. I walked fast, breathlessly fast, tripping over branches and stones as I went. My throat felt like it was burning. It was an elaborate performance, like everything in this school. The words had literally burned my throat. I had done the best I could. I was not afraid. I would defend myself and protect Victoria. And Mr Lavelle.
I didn’t yet see that sometimes there are forces stronger than you. It is an empirical fact, not a moral failing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I woke the morning after the fight with Helen in the summer house still feeling like I would survive the storm. Foolish, maybe. The room was in semi-darkness, the curtains closed.
I could hear Alice starting to shift in her bed and the bell ringing in the hall warning us that breakfast would be served in fifteen minutes. I hoped Victoria would be back so I could explain to her the strangeness of it all, though I feared for her.
Alice rose first. I expected she would say something to me about the summer house but she dressed in silence. I lay on my side, offering her privacy as I always did and thinking about what I would say to her. I was about to speak when she left the room, the door closing gently behind her. I sat up in bed.
She often waited for me.
I was one of the last to head for the stairs, the final bell ringing. Victoria’s door was shut tight. As I reached the entrance hall I noticed Mr Lavelle through the glass, standing on the porch steps, as he always did at this time, cup of coffee in hand. It was reassuring to see him there. His back lean and straight, facing the sea. And I broke the rules and did not go to the dining hall but instead opened the front door and stood beside him.
He didn’t turn his head. The air was cold and fresh; the sea in the distance lay still and had a glassy, grey colour like the sky. I thought I could smell smoke on the air from somewhere far off. Someone burning leaves and wood.
The peace was broken by a group of men working in the drive; they were setting up stalls and stands, dragging poles and containers over the gravel, getting ready for the Christmas fair. A photographer with a large camera was putting up a tripod. They looked like emissaries from the real world, their chat and laughter breaking the atmosphere of ice and gloom that hung around the building.
Mr Lavelle took a sip from his cup and then half-turned to look at me.
‘So you know then,’ he said. ‘She has summoned fire.’
I swallowed and felt ill. I reached out to steady myself on the railing at the side of the steps.
My hand was white against the rusted black paint.
‘I had a visit last night, from Sister Ignatius,’ he said.
His voice was tight and hard in a way that wasn’t usual. Like he was pretending to be mature now.
‘It’s serious,’ he said. ‘Quite serious, in its own way.’ He looked up to the sky.
I followed his gaze. White seabirds were flying high above our heads and the sky was a faint pink colour. Shepherd’s warning.
He didn’t sound angry, more confused. Dismayed.
‘Helen is going to say I wrote it, or maybe Victoria, and it’s not true, we didn’t,’ I said, facing him.
He turned more completely then to stare at me. He looked puzzled.
‘Isn’t it from Victoria?’ he said. ‘I’m sure you have read it.’
I shrugged my shoulders, pretending to know little. I could feel a faint tic or twitch in my eye. I put my hand over it to stop it. He watched me.
‘I saw them last night, the letter, the poem. Sister showed me,’ he said, taking a drink from his cup. ‘It sounds like Victoria.’
How could she do this to him? If she loved him, why would she try to create this drama? He must have rejected her, told her he wouldn’t run away with her. A change of mind, of heart. I felt faint hope that I wouldn’t lose her after all.
‘There is going to be a meeting of the Board of Governors today,’ he said. ‘I will be summoned to explain how a student could develop feelings like this and whether I encouraged it.’
The workmen were laughing, huddled beside one of the cars.
‘Who are the governors?’ I asked, watching them.
‘Priests, parents. Helen’s and Victoria’s, I believe,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, bowing my head. I could not think of anything else to say.
‘Why are you sorry?’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault. I have received letters and poems before, from both of them.’ He paused, staring wearily at the steps. ‘But in some kind of cosmic justice, this letter, the one I was shown last night, is not even one of those. It’s made up, to get me into trouble.’
‘Are you afraid?’ I asked.
He laughed half-heartedly. ‘Are you?’ he said, looking back at me.
I shook my head, lying.
He looked beautiful, almost transparent in the grey light, even though his eyes had shadows under them and his f
ace was thin with worry. Worry that he was trying to conceal from me. The smell of smoke that had been faint earlier was stronger suddenly. The damp, still air holding it.
‘It’s only a stupid letter and a poem anyway,’ I said. It was cold on the porch. I could feel the chill enter my bones through the thin jumper. ‘I mean, how bad can it get? It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘But then maybe it does mean something. Words do, they are weapons.’ He watched the men as he spoke. They had started to smoke as they went about their work. ‘If you choose to use them as such.’
He took his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. I followed the click and hiss of the lighter and then a pause to inhale.
‘You know that words are weapons,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what we do? The three of us, the sophists.’
He laughed again, but not in any joyous way.
Another car drove up, a deep rust colour. The driver parked it at an angle near the yew trees but didn’t get out.
Mr Lavelle flicked the ash from his cigarette into his cup rather than on to the steps.
There was the sound of something metal falling on gravel; one of the tent poles had come loose.
‘Some people are insecure; their love is built on the fear of loss. They are defensive of it. It becomes anxious and they end up destroying things,’ he said.
I knew he was speaking of Victoria. Her anxiety and jealousy of Helen; she had let it take over.
‘You know she loves you, then,’ I said.
I held my breath briefly after I spoke the words.
He nodded, not looking at me but staring out to sea. He placed his cup down on the ledge at the top of the steps and took another drag on the cigarette.
‘How could I not?’ he said.
‘And you, do you want her? Do you love her?’ I asked.
‘In my own way, but not as she would like,’ he said, looking at me then. ‘Not, perhaps, the way you do.’
His words fell like stones, dashing me on their descent.
I sank to the wet steps and put my head in my hands. He reached down and touched my shoulder. I felt the weight of it. I wanted to cry but there were no tears. My desire to be seen for who I really was, that was another of my illusions. They were right to shun me.
The Temple House Vanishing Page 17