A Proper Education for Girls (3 page)

“But she managed to leave this place,” said Alice, “which is what she wanted.”

“He'll never forgive her, you know,” said Old Mrs. Talbot. “Edwin can be so stubborn.” She sighed. “But then, obedience in a daughter is more than a virtue; it's a necessity. Edwin was harsh, but, well, can one blame him?”

“Of course one can,” retorted Aunt Lambert. “It was his own fault.”

“You're lucky he hasn't taken it out on you, Alice,” said Aunt Pendleton. “He might have locked you up!”

“Ah, but you see I'm not likely to have the opportunity,” said Alice. “He told me so himself. Mainly because no man would want me—I'm too ugly.”

“Oh no!” gasped the aunts.

“Oh yes,” said Alice. She smiled at their horrified faces.

“Oh, Alice!” But none of them looked her in the eye for they knew it was true. Where Lilian's skin was flawless and pale, Alice's was rough in texture and as dismal as whey. Lilian's hair was fine and soft, but although the same pale brown in color, Alice's was dull and wiry. And whereas Lilian's figure was slim and well proportioned, Alice's seemed angular—a breastless, waistless, and hipless body that no amount of corsetry and couture could mold or conceal.

“Of course,” said Aunt Lambert, moving the subject on to spare Alice's feelings, “if your mother had been around, things might have been very different. She certainly wouldn't have sent
her daughter off with a missionary man. Poor Lilian. She didn't know any better.”

Alice said nothing. Lilian, she knew, had always been fully aware of what she was doing, even when things did not turn out quite the way she had planned.

“Still, I doubt she's enjoying being saddled with a husband,” added Aunt Statham. “She would have been better off without him. They can be so demanding. And in that heat too. Well, perhaps he'll slake his beastly appetites in the bazaar and leave Lilian in peace.”

“Lydia, please,” murmured Mrs. Talbot. There was a silence, the only noise being the drip of water from somewhere deep within the foliage. The aunts exchanged glances. Alice felt the hot, moist air of the conservatory pressing against her face and neck like warm, sticky hands. Beside her, Aunt Rushton-Bell shuffled her playing cards uneasily.

“I gave her my late husband's
topi
and his rifle before she left, you know,” said Aunt Lambert after a moment. “For all his faults Mr. Lambert was actually quite keen on women being able to look after themselves. Not that he had much choice in the matter. I've never been one to allow a man to speak for me, and I certainly never needed one to take care of me when we were in India. I'm sure Lilian will be the same.”

Alice blinked, suddenly feeling tears pricking at her eyes. The passing of time had made the separation from her sister no easier to bear. The days were measured by those activities they had always undertaken together—watering the peach tree, tending to the orchids, supervising the cleaning of the Collection. Now, Alice performed these tasks alone and unaided, and she found that she did not have the stomach for any of them. The aunts might be sisters to one another, she reflected, but not one of them could know what it was like to have a sister who had shared
everything
—every moment of life, every pleasure, every disappointment, every unhappiness. It had seemed as though even their thoughts were alike, their feelings in sympathy at all times, often with hardly a word passing between them. But now Lilian had gone. She had made her decisions
and would have to live with the consequences, just as she, Alice, had to do.

“Now then, my dear, where shall we put this Mr. Blake when he comes?” said Aunt Lambert brightly, patting Alice on the hand.

“I wonder whether he'll play whist,” said Aunt Pendleton.

“What about Lilian's room?” said Alice. “No one's been in it since she left. He could go in there.”

“But what if she comes back?” said Old Mrs. Talbot.

“She's not coming back,” said Aunt Lambert irritably. “You know that.”

From beneath the iron grids in the floor came a dull throbbing sound, like the beating of an immense heart buried deep within the building.

Alice rolled her sister's portrait into a tube. “I really must bleed those pipes,” she said.

T
HE COACH DEPOSITED
M
R.
B
LAKE AT THE GATES
, which were, of course, welded closed. Having discovered this surprising fact, Mr. Blake abandoned his luggage (apart from his precious camera in its wooden box) where the coachman had left it and wandered off around the walls in search of a viable entrance. At length, he found his way through the stable at the back of the house. He walked round the building to the front and rang the bell.

He was greeted, after a considerable wait, by a manservant so advanced in age that he seemed scarcely able to pull the door wide. For a moment it seemed as though the man had not, in fact, answered Mr. Blake's knock at all but had simply been passing by and had decided, on impulse, to take a look outside.

“Good morning,” said Mr. Blake. “I believe I'm expected?”

The man muttered something that sounded disconcertingly like an expletive and receded back into the house, pushing the door closed. Mr. Blake waited and rubbed his hands together to keep them warm. He took a deep lungful of frosty air and blew out a cloud of breath.

Despite this inconvenient start to his new commission, Mr. Blake was greatly relieved to be away from London, with its crowded and filthy streets and its damp and foul air. He was even more relieved to be away from St. Thomas's, though he had to
admit that working for Dr. Cattermole had been memorable in many ways. For a start, it had allowed him to develop his photography skills, while his medical training had meant that he had always known exactly what the doctor was talking about. Together, they had taken hundreds of photographs—amputees' stumps; organs, sliced and laid out neatly for the camera; suppurating ulcers; burst appendices, and faces consumed by syphilis—all had passed under the scrutiny of Dr. Cattermole's lens.

“It's about detail,” Dr. Cattermole had said, standing over an eviscerated cadaver and rubbing his hands together hungrily. “What we're providing is a visual catalog of sickness and disease. A catalog that lets us chart the balance between good health and bad—the road back to health, the numbing horror of stasis, or the descent into mortification. All equally fascinating journeys.” Mr. Blake had nodded, though he had been troubled by the doctor's growing zeal in his quest to locate the most gruesome manifestations of disease.

Now, waiting outside the great house, Mr. Blake shuddered. The stench of carbolic and decomposition that had pervaded the mortuary seemed to cling to him still.

Mr. Blake banged on the door. “Hello?” he shouted. “Is anybody there? Hello?
Hello?
” The door jerked open, and he found himself staring at a tall, angular woman wearing what looked like a printer's apron.

“There's no need to shout,” the woman said.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “I thought your man had forgotten me.”

“Who, Sluce?” she smiled grimly. “He probably did.” She held out her hand. “I'm Miss Talbot. I presume you're Mr. Blake, the photographer?”

He took her hand. She had long fingers that, he noticed with some surprise, were as blotched and streaked with brown stains as her apron. A feeble winter sun emerged, briefly, from behind the clouds. Its glare illuminated a fine layer of hairs that covered her
cheeks and upper lip like the down on a peach. Why, he thought, she was really quite ugly. But then the sun went in again and she was, he realized, simply plain.

“Someone will bring your luggage in,” she said.

Mr. Blake gave a slight bow.

She looked at the wooden camera box he was carrying. “Is that all you have?”

“The rest is at the gates. They seem to be welded closed. Perhaps your man would—”

“They
are
welded closed. This house is not like most other houses,” said Alice. “Did Dr. Cattermole tell you that?”

“My dear Miss Talbot,” said Mr. Blake. “I have just spent six months in a mortuary. I can assure you that that is not like most other places either.”

Alice shrugged and led him into the hall.

T
WELVE GRANDFATHER CLOCKS
stood at attention against the wall at the foot of the staircase, each one sullenly chipping away at the time. “Twelve clocks?” Mr. Blake ventured bleakly.

“My father winds them once a week,” said Alice. “He is vigilant as to their accuracy.” Mr. Blake saw her glance at him out of the corner of her eye, saw her smile at his bemused expression. “They chime together,” she said. “Exactly together.”

“It must be very loud,” he observed, for want of something more insightful to say. “And this is—what, exactly?” He pointed to a mass of cogs and wheels squatting beneath a huge glass dome.

“A section of Mr. Babbage's difference engine. It was taken to bits after the Great Exhibition. Mr. Babbage said it had been poorly displayed, its future significance ignored by an unimaginative multitude. My father secured a part of it for the Collection.”

Mr. Blake nodded. He had no idea what she was talking about.

“It's a calculation machine,” said Alice gently.

“I shall be sure to take its picture,” said Mr. Blake. He followed Alice through the crowded hallways.

She pushed open a pair of double doors. “This,” she said over her shoulder, “is the hothouse. The temperate house, in which I have established a small studio, is farther on. I'll take you through.”

The doors to the hothouse closed silently, sealing the two of them within. The atmosphere was leaden with moisture, and Mr. Blake felt instantly as though he had been submerged, fully clothed, in a warm clear broth. He mopped his forehead and looked about anxiously. High above, desperate leaves pressed against the glass ceiling like hands. Shrubs and bushes clawed at his clothes and slapped at his camera as he followed Alice through the greenery. Everything seemed to be swathed in moss or squeezed by creepers and climbers. Here and there some of the larger specimens had split their pots open and dribbled grainy pyramids of soil onto the floor. Those bricked into the foundations had heaved against their constraints, causing floor tiles to crack and buckle. Others had burst through completely, providing obscene glimpses of hairy wrists and knuckles of root. Through the foliage, for a moment, Mr. Blake was sure he glimpsed a collection of unoccupied furniture—tables and chairs, a sideboard even—but he could not be sure.

“And does your father still add to his botanical collection?” He panted, struggling to keep a grip on his camera.

“No,” snapped Alice.

Mr. Blake raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“My father rarely comes here,” added Alice after a moment, as though realizing how ungracious she sounded. “He had the conservatory built—the biggest in England, of course; it's twenty-six feet high, one hundred feet in length and fifty feet wide—but it was my mother who grew the plants. When she died my sister and I tended to them. But my father never comes here now. He rarely came even when my mother was alive; though he was happy to indulge her interest in botany. And my sister's.”

“And now?” persisted Mr. Blake, stumbling over a shaggy root as thick as a ship's mooring rope. “Now who cares for this place?”

“Now I work here alone.”

“And your father indulges
your
taste in botany, I hope?” Mr.
Blake smiled what he hoped was a smile of charm and sincerity, but Alice did not turn around to see it.

They passed through another set of double doors. Instantly the air became cool and dry the foliage less dense and tangled and the light brighter. Mr. Blake breathed a sigh of relief. His eye was caught by a vast wheeled container standing in a clearing beside the building's glass wall. He gazed at it in amazement. The huge brass wheels supported a bucket made of thick oak planks, tarred like the sides of a ship. Here and there patches of moss and lichen adhered to its hull like beards of seaweed and patches of barnacles. The bucket contained a tree.

“Why is that tree on wheels?” he said, before he could stop himself.

“So that it can be moved,” said Alice. Her tone suggested that the question was a foolish one.

“Why does it need to be moved?”

Alice clicked her tongue. “It's a peach tree,” she said. “My mother loved peaches. She used to wheel the tree between the temperate house and the hothouse so as to give it the best growing conditions. Sometimes it goes outside altogether. Its fruits are quite remarkable.”

A
LICE'S EARLIEST MEMORY
was of peaches. Their taste, as sweet as nectar, was the taste of her childhood; the smell and feel of them filled her with sorrow and happiness. She could remember helping her mother pick those exquisite fuzzy fruits, putting them in baskets to be taken to the kitchens and turned into tarts or preserves. Her mother would slice the finest of them into segments with her pocket-knife, and Lilian and Alice would open their little mouth like birds, waiting for the silky segments to be placed on their tongues. Sometimes they would be given a whole fruit each, and they would dig their teeth into the heavy flesh, the juices running down their chins and over their sticky fingers.