Confession (10 page)

‘One moment – ’ Madame held up her hand and looked at me, not pityingly, but candidly. Her watchful eyes narrowed slightly. ‘You wish to teach in my school? But I already have an English Master as you know only too well. He is a good teacher, is he not?’

‘My sister and I could teach both your students equally well, both boarders and day girls. In exchange for our board and for our continued studies in French and German. That way you would not have to pay for an extra member of staff?’

Madame’s brow creased slightly. ‘You would like me,’ she said ‘to dismiss Monsieur Grès?’

‘Perhaps another post might be found for him?’ I stuttered fearing out Directrice’s disapproval yet also safe in the knowledge that Madame was nothing if not a pragmatist. She knew a good business deal when she saw one and at this instant one was standing right in front of her – a teacher who would teach for nothing.

‘I will think it over,’ she said. ‘You say Miss Emily would agree to teaching music as well?’

‘Yes, piano however I would ask you not to tell my sister that I came to you. Emily is…has been…looking forward to returning to England. She enjoys Brussels of course but – ’

‘I do not understand. First you say that the two of you wish to stay on, now you say only one of you does?’

‘We both want to stay,’ I lied. ‘But if the idea was put to Emily by yourself she would consider it more seriously. She would deem it a professional courtesy rather than a whim of her big sister’s.’

‘Very politic.’

‘Is it?’ I said.

‘Your sister’s accomplishment in music should not go to waste – she is very good, isn’t she?’ This was not a question so much as a statement of fact consequently I said nothing. Madame smiled although her smile was by no means warm. ‘I will see what I can do,’ she said at which point I thanked her and we took our leave of each other, she disappearing into her private quarters while I returned to the schoolroom and from thence the garden.

The blossom of only a few weeks ago had fallen from the trees leaving a carpet of white underfoot. I made my way to the Allée Defendu and took a seat next to the yew tree out of sight of the school. Closing my eyes I could feel the dappled sunlight as it kissed my skin. I
knew I had done something wrong yet the truth was I did not feel guilty, far from it, I was elated. If Madame agreed to my proposal we should be here for at least another six months. I would have secured a stay of execution for that is how it felt.

Life or death.

The life of the spirit versus the death of my soul.

X

After the half-term break Emily found it hard to return to the classroom. Her temperament was unsuited to discipline. She was all root & rock, not rules & regulation whereas I could not have been happier sitting at my desk, surrendering once again to my Master’s words.

Not that Monsieur Heger had mellowed. He was as fierce a critic then as he had been when we first arrived at the school; indeed the more accomplished we grew the sterner he became. The essays that we had completed before the half-term break were littered with corrections. I looked over his comments on mine – a composition entitled
The Nest
. Every sentence, every clause had been scored out or scrawled over – yet unlike on previous occasions, this time I welcomed the attention my teacher paid me for the patience it must have taken to whittle away at my awkward phrasing, to smooth my prose out so that it flowed like liquid. Monsieur Heger had even taken the time to scrawl further notes at the bottom of the page.

Advice: - ‘What weight’
wrote he, ‘
should be given to details, in developing a subject? –

Remorselessly
sacrifice everything that does not contribute to clarity, verisimilitude, and effect.

Emphasize everything that sets the main idea in relief, so that the overall impression be colourful, picturesque. It is sufficient that the rest be
in its proper place, but in half-tone,
That
is what gives to style, as to painting, unity, perspective, and
effect.

Read Harmony XIV of Lamartine,
The Infinite
: we will analyze it together,
from the point of view of the details.

I read and re-read my teacher’s words, drinking in his advice, coveting the final ‘we will analyze it together’. Just as he had promised when we had talked that evening in the garden, Monsieur Heger wanted to work
with
me on bettering my use of language and on rendering nature more truthfully. I was overjoyed.

Not so Emily.

I knew the minute I glanced over at my sister and saw how she was staring down at her essay and the hundreds of little black marks that – yet again - she was affronted. Her hands shook.

‘Monsieur?’ she said meeting his eyes with a stony glare. ‘You found what I wrote displeasing?’

‘Your grammar needs work. Your ideas are frank, which I admire but the execution of those ideas is wayward. You stray from the subject too easily – ’

‘The subject needed expanding – ’

‘Did I request you to do that?’

‘Do none of your pupils think for themselves?’

‘My pupils do as I say because I am their teacher and as such it is my duty to educate them.

You do not like what I have said about your work?’

‘Surely, Monsieur, it is the other way around?’

‘A teacher has to critique what he reads otherwise there is no point in teaching. You wish to learn?’

‘I wish to write what I see fit.’

‘And I wish you to write what you see fit but to do so I believe both you and your sister need on occasion to separate the heart from the mind. By all means go off and invent new worlds but one still needs to consent to some formal discipline,
n’est pas
?’ Monsieur Heger cocked his head to one side as he said this, his dark eyes glittering. It was obvious he and Emily did not draw well together and yet I had to admire him for his sanguine approach in the face of this storm. ‘And you?’ he enquired turning to me. ‘Are you of the same opinion as your sister?’

‘I….?’ I stuttered not quite knowing which side I took. For so long I had been desperate for my teacher’s attention yet I also admired Emily’s forthrightness. Of course I knew she was capable of strong emotions but I had never seen her illustrate them with anyone outside the family and a creeping jealousy suddenly flooded me. I had strong opinions too. I might seem mild, remain meek or stand silent but I wanted,
needed
to be recognized for how I
felt
as much as anyone else.

I looked across at Emily and then at Monsieur who, far from seeming perturbed as most gentlemen might, remained calm and unruffled. How different he was to the men we knew back home, the brothers of our friends; the colleagues of our father. Did we even exist to people such as them? Emily & I had often discussed this on our long walks together over the moors - the ground hard as hooves, clouds racing across the sky in the bitter, northerly winds –

‘We’re invisible,’ she’d scream.

‘But we live alongside them? Why don’t they want to know what we think, who we are? My heart does not ignore the blood that pumps through my body. My body does not ignore the soul that nests within my heart – we are all one – they are us and we are them – ’

‘To recognize that equality exists in some quarters does not mean equality reigns in every quarter.’

‘I do not understand – ’

‘Would it make you feel better if they did recognize you, if they did acknowledge your dark side, if they could recognize your thoughts, sympathize with your dreams…. ?’

‘Yes,’ I shouted. ‘Yes! I don’t always want to be acting how others think I should act – I want to be myself – ’

‘God recognizes you – ’

‘Does he?’ I said but at that moment I did not much believe that he did and besides however much we might be recognized by the Almighty suddenly the only thing that mattered was being accepted for the creature I was here on Earth. So I had asked her again why most men seemed unwilling to see beyond outward appearances. ‘Why can’t they encourage us?’

‘Why should they?’

Why indeed. Yet here was Monsieur Heger – better than most – highly educated, well travelled.
He
didn’t condemn Emily as a lesser man might for speaking her mind. He didn’t pronounce her hysterical or try to demean her. To him Emily and I were not strange creatures. If anything
he
was the strange one,
he
was the one willing to accept what others shunned.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why did you do it when you know my feelings on the matter? I have been dreaming of returning to England ever since we arrived.
Dreaming
,’ she repeated. ‘Every night when I go to bed I pray that when I wake up I shall be on the boat back home, that all I shall hear will be the waves and the gulls – ’

Calmly I tried to persuade my sister it had not been my suggestion. ‘Madame Heger,’ I said looking Emily straight in the eye, ‘has simply enquired if we would be interested.’

‘I do not believe you. You have already agreed. You forget I know what you are like.’ Our conversation, such as it was, had begun immediately after Madame had approached us with her offer of employment in return for our continued studies, bed and board. Emily had walked away without saying a word leaving me to catch up with her in the schoolroom where I could see her eyes welling with tears.

‘This is your doing,’ she said, her flat Yorkshire vowels growing stronger with every word she spat at me. ‘I know you are behind this. You.
You
– ’

‘I don’t deny that I wish to stay on, yes, but you are being fanciful Emily. This is Madame’s suggestion. It is her school – how on earth could I have engineered such a thing?’

Emily turned her back on me.

‘Be reasonable,’ I said and then a little more softly. ‘We can go home if you want to. Nothing is set in stone – ’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do. That is precisely what I want.’

‘You are certain of that? This is such an opportunity – ’

‘You should not have said we could go home if you did not mean it – ’

‘But you have borne it here with such a valiant heart – surely another six months wouldn’t – ’

‘Madame asked me to teach music!’

‘You are good at music.’

‘I am good at many things but I do not want to teach them,’ she replied with a shudder.

‘But that is why we are here dearest. How can we go home and open up our own school if you balk at the merest suggestion of teaching! You have made rapid progress in French,

German, Music and Drawing surely you want to….. ’

‘It will be different when I teach these things back there.
I
will be different.’

I let out a long sigh. ‘Yes,’ I whispered.

‘You hate me.’

‘Your singularities try me– ’

‘I was certain you had put Madam up to it. You fit in so well here.’

‘I like it, yes.’

‘But
why
do you like it? I cannot bear being here yet you thrive in this place. What is the

difference between us? Why are you so happy when I am so miserable?’

‘We are not the same person, Emily – ’

‘I cannot be the one responsible for saying no to her offer. For dashing your hopes – ’

Here Emily paused and stared at me as if challenging me to say we could return home but I remained silent. ‘If we stay it would only be for another six months. After that we would go back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Swear it.’

‘I – ’

‘
Swear
it.’

‘On my oath,’ I said.

Emily turned around and walked out through the half-open double doors into the garden. Had I betrayed my sister in order to feed my own wants? Great is Truth, and mighty above all things
³
and yet at that moment I was convinced that it was Madame’s idea and her idea alone that we stay on in Brussels. If I had instigated the moment, I had written it out of the story.

That was the truth; I was a liar.

Dear Ellen
– I wrote whilst sitting down at my desk. The schoolroom was quiet although a small group of students sat in a group at the far end of the room studying under the warm glow of a lamp.
I began seriously to think you had no particular intention of writing to me again – however let us have no reproaches, thank you for your letter.

I consider it doubtful whether I shall come home in September or not – Madame Heger has made a proposal for both me and Emily to stay another half year – offering to dismiss her English master and take me as English teacher – also to employ Emily some part of each day in teaching music to a certain number of pupils – for these services we are to be allowed to continue our studies in French and German – and to have board &c without paying for it – no salaries however are offered – the proposal is kind and in a great selfish city like Brussels and a great selfish school containing nearly ninety pupils (boarders & day-pupils included) implies a degree of interest which demands gratitude in return – I am inclined to accept it – what think you?

Here, I was momentarily interrupted by three students bursting into the classroom, amongst them Vertue Basompierre whose voice rose above those of her companions in a most regrettable manner. She was entertaining them with a story concerning one of her many admirers but on seeing me seated alone in the darkest part of the schoolroom – she lost no time in adding how she could think of no sadder predicament in the world than that of the middle-aged spinster. Here Vertue, turning her eyes towards the Heavens, made the sign of the cross while her companions giggled and I continued to write –
If the national character of the Belgians is to be measured by the character of most of the girls in this school, it is a character singularly cold, selfish, animal and inferior – they are besides very
mutinous and difficult for the teachers to manage – and their principles are rotten to the core – we avoid them – which is not difficult to do – as we have the brand of Protestantism and Anglicism upon us
.

People talk of the danger which protestants expose themselves to in going to reside in Catholic countries-and thereby running the chance of changing their faith – my advice to all protestants who are tempted to do anything so besotted as turn Catholic – is to walk over the sea on to the continent – to attend mass sedulously for a time – to note well the mummeries thereof – also the idiotic, mercenary, aspect of
all
the priests - &
then
if they are still disposed to consider Papistry in any other light than a most feeble childish piece of humbug let them turn papists at once that’s all – I consider Methodism, Quakerism & the extremes of high & low Churchism foolish but Roman Catholicism beats them all.