A Proper Education for Girls (23 page)

“Come now,” Mrs. Cattermole said briskly. “You've no need to be shy.”

Mr. Blake floundered out of the treacherous undertow of her ballooning skirts. “Mrs. Cattermole,” he cried, lurching into the
arms of the stuffed grizzly bear that stood rampant beside the wash-stand. “Sophia. Please. Think of your husband.”

Mrs. Cattermole began to weep. Mr. Blake groaned inwardly. Not tears, anything but tears. Anger he could brace himself against, but with tears there was always a risk that he might compromise. He steeled himself and patted her shoulder in what he hoped was a comradely way. “Come now,” he repeated, passing her his handkerchief.

“I am ruined,” she sobbed. “You have tired of me? You've had enough of me?” She flung his handkerchief back at him.

Mr. Blake said nothing. He sensed that she might be about to storm out and reasoned that a heavy silence on his part might increase the likelihood of this. He stared at the floor and counted the seconds.

“I carry your child and you tell me to return to my husband!” cried Mrs. Cattermole, her voice louder than ever. “How can you?” She seized his handkerchief again and buried her face in it.

Mr. Blake felt as though he were falling into a pit. He wondered, briefly, hopelessly, whether he had misheard her, though he knew this was impossible as she was shouting so loudly it was enough to alert the entire household to her unfortunate condition.

“I came here to tell you this,” she said, “to make you accept your responsibilities and to warn you against working too closely with Miss Talbot—ah! I see I have your attention now! So, you are attracted to her?” His expression told her everything. “You can't be! You can't throw
me
aside for such a meanly proportioned spinster! For such an ugly and unnatural thing as
that?”
Her voice rose to a shriek. “You reject
me
for a … a freak of nature like Alice Talbot? Why, she, she … well, let me tell you, Mr. Blake, that woman … that woman should be in a
circus!
Oh yes! A circus. Or a museum
of grotesques!”

Mr. Blake's head was spinning, though whether this was from the port he had taken after dinner or the ether he had had before it, he could not say. He opened his mouth to speak. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that Alice Talbot was the most marvelous creature he had ever met, that she was outspoken, intelligent, brave,
and, he had to admit, with the best eye for composition that he'd come across. But he didn't. He didn't say anything. Instead, he closed his mouth and allowed Mrs. Cattermole to continue her tirade.

“Did you know that she's neither man nor woman? Did you know that her father keeps her here as
a part
of his Collection, not simply to act as its housekeeper? Oh yes! Had you not noticed how unfeminine she is? My husband has told me everything, though I see from your face that
she
has told
you
nothing. You would be as well to go back to your medical books, Mr. Blake. Look up the word ‘hermaphrodite’ and see what it tells you.”

A
LICE DESCENDED FROM THE STICKY HEIGHTS OF THE
hothouse. Marriage? What was she thinking of? What sort of escape would it be to move from being her father's curator to being Mr. Blake's wife? It would still leave her hopelessly dependent on a man for every material need. She could run away but how would she survive? How would she get out to India? She had no money of her own, no idea how to go about getting a job, and was quite inexperienced in the ways of the world. For a woman like herself, marriage was the only escape possible. In her pocket, her fingers felt the crumpled edges of Lilian's letter.
Come out Alice. Come soon if possible
. But would Mr. Blake really consent to sail halfway around the world in search of a sister he had never met? Whatever he might say to the contrary now, once she was Mrs. Blake, Mr. Blake could make any decision he chose with regard to their life together. Besides, thought Alice wearily, her father would never agree to her marrying anyone. He would provide no dowry and no income. He would object on the grounds that she was disobeying his wishes, that as his only remaining child her duty lay with him and with the Collection that was his life's work. Perhaps she would be better off staying where she was and waiting for Lilian to come to her instead.

Clearing away pruning off-cuts was a tedious job, but Alice needed something to distract her from the carousel of her own thoughts. She set about gathering up the severed foliage that lay in
drifts about the hothouse floor, stuffing armfuls of it into hessian sacks to be taken away and burned the following morning. The task seemed interminable, and by the time she had finished, her dress was covered with leaves and brindled with green and brown stains. Her hands and face were filthy. Her hair had partly come down and was snagged with twigs and bits of green stuff. She was thirsty and exhausted, but her thoughts were still circling like the leaves she had sent whirling and tumbling down from the dizzy heights of the hothouse.

Alice headed toward the aunts' jungle parlor. From beneath an upturned plant pot hidden among the foliage beside Aunt Rushton-Bell's whist table, she extracted a rectangular leather pouch. Unbuttoning it, she drew out one of her father's cigars. It was not often she had the chance to smoke tobacco. The aunts disapproved (“It reminds me of your father,” said Aunt Lambert with a barely suppressed shudder), and she was seldom without the company of one or other of them in the hothouse. Now, however, she was alone and needed time to think. Snipping the end off the cigar with a pair of gardening scissors, she sank into Aunt Lambert's armchair, rummaging beneath the cushions for the brandy she knew her aunt kept secreted there. A glass or two would surely do something to calm her thoughts. After all, it was not every day that one proposed to a man one hardly knew. As her fingers curled about the familiar bottle, however, a rustling of the foliage disturbed the dripping silence. Regretfully, Alice slipped the cigar out of sight, even as a voice called out.

“Alice? Alice! Are you there?”

“Yes, Aunt.” Alice stuffed the brandy bottle back into its chintz lair and rose to her feet. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, my dear.” Aunt Pendleton stumbled forward, a quivering lacy apparition emerging from the seething darkness of the jungle. The candle she carried shook violently in her hands. “It's Mr. Blake. Do come quickly. He's asking for you. Well, not exactly asking, but it was certainly your name he mentioned. I think he's lost his mind.”

“Where is he?”

“In the linen cupboard. The one on the second floor.” Afterward, Alice would remember how she had not felt the need to question this unexpected and bizarre intelligence, believing there was bound to be a rational explanation. “Is he locked in?” she inquired as they made their way back through the foliage. “As a precaution. I mean, if he has gone mad one would assume incarceration to be the best course of action—”

“Oh, no. The others are with him. Mrs. Rushton-Bell. Mrs. Talbot. Mrs. Statham. Mrs. Lambert. They are looking after him. Smelling salts, lavender water, that sort of thing. There's talk of sending for a custard. Heavy and nutritious foods serving to lower and sedate the raging spirit, of course.”

“Of course,” said Alice. “And is Mr. Blake ‘raging’?”

“Well, not exactly. But then I doubt there will be anyone in the kitchens able to furnish us with a custard at this time of night, so perhaps it's just as well. A slice of Dr. Cattermole's Bakewell tart might have served, but he's probably eaten it all. He usually does.”

T
HE LINEN CUPBOARD
on the second floor was adjacent to Mr. Blake's room. In recent years the number of domestic servants had become so few that the linen was brought up from the washhouse as and when it was needed, or when someone remembered to see to the task. As a result the cupboard had fallen into semi-disuse. In former, more opulent, times, however, it had been the main repository of sheets, pillows, pillowcases, blankets, and eiderdowns for the entire west wing of the great house. Its windowless walls were lined with row upon row of shelves, like a vault, upon which the snowy bales of newly washed laundry were neatly stacked. It abutted the main chimney and so was almost overpoweringly warm no matter what the temperature outside. Now, its door stood open. Alice could see within a gathering of aunts, their black scarecrow shadows thrown by the light of a single flickering candle.

“You know, I've seen Mr. Blake disappear into this cupboard
before,” whispered Aunt Statham confidingly as Alice joined the group. “I presumed he was going to get some fresh bedding. After all, if one waited for anyone else to change one's sheets it would never get done.”

“I've seen him going in too,” said Aunt Lambert. “Though I must say I never saw him come out.”

“Nor did I,” said Aunt Rushton-Bell. She stepped aside to allow Alice through. “There he is, my dear,” she added, as though Mr. Blake's prostrate body could easily be mistaken for anything other than what it was. “He's naked, of course.”

“The heat, I suppose.” Aunt Rushton-Bell fanned her face with the handkerchief that she had, moments before, been wafting in Mr. Blake's direction. “It's a dry heat too. Most debilitating. Poor fellow.”

Alice surveyed the photographer's recumbent form. It seemed that Mr. Blake had had the presence of mind to fold his clothes neatly and lay them on a stool beside the door before climbing onto one of the laundry room's middle shelves. There, among the enveloping mounds of sheets and blankets, he had created a nest for himself. The air, Alice could not fail to notice, was heavy with the reek of ether. An empty bottle glittered up at her, like a drugged eye, from among the sleepy folds of linen.

“He's lucky he didn't cause an explosion,” she muttered under her breath. “What on earth was he thinking, bringing a candle and a bottle of ether into so enclosed a space?” In Mr. Blake's limp left hand Alice noticed a bundle of fabric. The color and pattern seemed familiar and, as she pulled it free, she found it was made up of one of her own handkerchiefs (the badly embroidered initials on the corner were Alice's own reluctant handiwork), a wad of linen they used for buffing the photographic plates, and what looked like a strip torn off the hem of a lady's petticoat. Alice gave these materials a tentative sniff. Feeling her own head begin to swim, she hastily thrust the bundle into her pocket.

Mr. Blake's eyes rolled back in his head. He began to mumble to himself as though speaking an incantation, the same indistinct
words over and over again. The aunts leaned forward, all the better to catch what he might be saying.

“Speak up, Mr. Blake!” cried Old Mrs. Talbot, a hand cupped around her ear.

The photographer's eyes flickered open. “No, no, no,” he moaned. His vacant gaze seemed to focus, suddenly, on the ring of white faces that surrounded him, so that his features took on an expression of absolute terror. “Away!” he screamed, rearing up from among the bedding. “It's Cattermole you want, not me.” He thrashed into violent activity, the sheets and blankets winding themselves around his arms and legs tighter than any straitjacket. His gaze swept back and forth until it alighted, with something like relief, on Alice. “Is that you?” he breathed, for a moment sounding lucid. “Thank God.” But then he seemed to become confused again. A shadow passed across his face. “Who
are
you?” he hissed, his eyes fixed upon her. “And
what?
”

“He was delirious when I found him,” said Aunt Pendleton. “I heard shouting from inside the cupboard and opened the door to find him flailing about in a tangle of sheets and crying out as though Satan himself were in pursuit. The poor fellow looked terrified. He stared straight at me and shouted for a doctor. Then he shouted for you and told me that Dr. Cattermole was a devil and not to be trusted under any circumstances.”

“I can find nothing to disagree with in that observation,” said Alice.

“Then he began to sing what I can only assume was a music hall song about being deceived by the charms of a beautiful young lady.”

“Alice is here, Mr. Blake,” shouted Old Mrs. Talbot, as though the photographer were deaf rather than deranged. “You can speak to her now.”

Mr. Blake had not taken his eyes off Alice. “You!” he croaked. “She told me all about you. Is it true?” A cunning look appeared on his face. “Is that
your
secret?”

“He's unhinged,” whispered Aunt Statham. “Do pull yourself
together, Mr. Blake,” she cried. “Do you not realize where you are?” She reached for the candle, holding it aloft so that the shadows leaped and flickered like demons.

But the swaying candle and dancing shadows seemed only to agitate him further. “She's coming for me!” he cried. “Put out the lights! Quickly now, and she might not see us!” He flapped a pillowcase at the candle, so that Alice only just managed to stop it from falling from Aunt Statham's shaking hand into the warm bedding. The hot wax splashed onto Mr. Blake's naked thigh and he let out a scream. “It's too late,” he shrieked. “Too late! I can feel her lips upon me!”

“He'll burn the place down,” said Aunt Lambert. “We must get him out of here and into bed.”