Confession (15 page)

He was an ugly fellow with a swarthy complexion and a voice that spoke of alcohol yet the anxiety he aroused in me instantaneously turned me from lamb into lion! I ordered him to
find the captain for I was not to be turned back and at last he relented and I climbed on board.

Triumph! Victory! I was shown to a small cabin below deck inside which stood my berth where I lay down exhausted. I had not even left the country yet I already felt anchorless and at sea. Not that excitement did not over-ride these emotions; quite the contrary for boldness it seemed quite suited me. The following day I made a point of treating each stage of my journey as a new challenge and in this way soon found myself entering the Rue d’Isabelle once again.

Arriving at around seven o’clock on an evening marked by the characteristics of cold, penetrating rain and a sharp wind it was both a comfort and a relief to enter the familiar hallway and be greeted by the familiar sights, sounds and even the smells of that place. Madame Heger greeted me warmly enough and ushered me through to her private apartments where a huge log fire burned.

I had forgotten what a strange room it was - how much it glittered –how every surface reflected some further surface.

‘You have travelled well, I hope?’ Madame asked with concern. ‘And your father, he is in good health?’

‘He is well, Madame, thank you,’ I said.

When earlier that day I had stepped off the boat in Ostend and found myself on the quayside ordering an elderly porter to carry my trunk to the coach, it surprised me how joyful it felt to be conversing in French again. The same feeling gripped hold of me as I spoke to Madame. I could almost taste the words as I spoke them; I savoured each one as a gourmand might relish the most delicate morsels, the swan’s tongues and sweetmeats of some foreign principality.

I asked after Madame’s children and she, in turn, enquired after Emily.

‘It is best she stayed at home,’ Madame opined, ‘to look after your father. He must find it a great comfort now that your Aunt is dead to have someone to watch over him.’

‘A great comfort,’ I repeated. ‘Emily is to look after the house. She is quite content there.’

‘It is cold in England?’

I acknowledged how cold it was.

‘It is cold here too,’ she replied nodding at the huge fire whose flames leapt and crackled as we spoke. I had forgotten the mirror with its fine golden frame hung on the opposite side of the room and how the light danced on its surface like water. ‘I hope you will not be too lost without your sister here as a companion?’ Madame continued. ‘We would like you to use our sitting-room as you would at home. Indeed we would be more than happy to see you here in the evenings. Mademoiselle Blanche and Madame Muhl sometimes join us for a few hours after supper. You remember them? No doubt you shall want to get to know some of the other teachers too now that you are to join their ranks – ’

‘That is very generous of you – ’ I replied thinking about Mademoiselle Blanche, how haughtily she had treated Emily & I the previous year when we were mere pupils, how she would to talk about us unfavourably with her students as if we were not within earshot. As for the other teachers, they were hardly an improvement. Mademoiselle Sophie’s best feature was that she loathed Mademoiselle Blanche while Mademoiselle Haussé never struck me as anything but foolish, being solely occupied with her own self-importance.

‘You were sorely missed here as a teacher – ’

‘But I had barely begun my duties in that capacity…’

Madame stood up to place an extra log on the fire and in so doing glanced at herself in the mirror. ‘You can begin classes tomorrow, I hope?’ she said smoothing down the edge of her
collar. ‘The Mesdemoiselles Wrights are expecting you – ’

‘I will start as soon as you wish.’

‘Good. We have three new pupils since you were here last, two French sisters and a young girl– Marianne Wilke – ’

‘May I ask about my own lessons, Madame? I am anxious not to lose any of the ground I made here the last time.’

Madame Heger looked towards the door to the adjoining room as if at any moment her husband might materialize from behind it.

‘Monsieur was very impressed with your studies,’ she said. ‘I believe he will talk to you tomorrow about their resumption. Of course nothing of note has happened since you were last in Brussels. We are all much the same. Prospére is finding it…. ’

But here my attention waned. I was extremely tired and soon enough Madame recognized my fatigue and we bade each other goodnight.

My trunk had already been taken upstairs to the dormitory yet despite this and despite knowing I should proceed directly to bed – I slipped into the schoolroom. I had dreamt of this moment – walking back through the doors of this room, looking out through the windows to the garden beyond.

A few oil lamps still burned although all the boarders had retired to the dormitory so the room greeted me silently.

I walked over to where my old desk had once stood and placed my hand on the porcelain inkwell. What if, I thought, it was
still
my desk? What if no one else had been seated there since my departure? Timidly I lifted the lid and peeped inside expecting only to see the books
and other dull belongings of some new pupil’s taking possession. But lo! The desk was empty – empty of everything except for a few scraps of old paper.

‘Who are you?’

Just as I was closing the lid, the schoolroom door opened and a girl I did not recognize entered.

She was a strange little being – no more than thirteen or fourteen-years of age - or so I would guess, with a big, moon-like face and large watery eyes which now stared at me – obviously taking me for an interloper, an impression that did not change even after I had explained what I was doing there.

‘Is Mademoiselle Basompierre still a pupil here?’ I enquired for want of anything better to ask.

Dumbly Marianne Wilke – for that was the girl’s name – nodded. ‘Vertue,’ she drawled, ‘is out this evening at a ball with some of the other pupils.’

‘But not you?’ I said kindly.

‘Me? I have never been to a ball. Besides I do not know anyone in Brussels – ’

‘You are a foreigner then like me?’ I said brightly. ‘Where is it you come from?’

The girl shook her head – ‘I live in Brussels –’ she said.

‘But,’ I hesitated as I tried to make sense of what she was telling me, ‘you say you do not know anyone here?’

‘No,’ she said, her watery eyes blinking so slowly it lent her a slightly imbecilic appearance. ‘I know no one.’

‘Then we are two of a kind!’ I declared hoping to elicit a smile or at the very least an intimation of comradeship, but Marianne Wilke’s face remained blank.

II

To return to a place where one has once lived, even after so short an interval is an unsettling business. Reason tells you that everything remains the same. You are sleeping in the same bed, you are looking through the same windows, you are treading the same floorboards, but the mind’s eye says, No, that is not the truth. You keep meeting your shadow coming back, so to speak. Past scenes reassemble before your eyes; you are there and yet not there. You retrace your steps in the present while treading over ghosts from the past.

The next morning when I awoke I immediately looked for Emily before recalling that my sister was safe back in England. I was here alone. In a foreign country, in a foreign school and yet I felt at home, so much so that when I descended the stairs to breakfast and passed by the statue of the Virgin I greeted her presence as one might meet an old friend. Her blue eyes rested on mine and I found great gentleness in their gaze.

‘I was told you had returned,’ Vertue’s voice was unmistakeable. ‘I was certain it must be a mistake! How extremely vexing,’ she said almost, but not quite, smiling in her attempt to look cross.

‘And you I see are still here at the Pensionat,’ I responded as archly as I thought wise.

‘I was most certain you would have moved on by now, returned to Paris at the very least and yet, here you still are!’

‘Only for a short while longer – ’

‘But how will everyone manage without you!’ I exclaimed.

‘You are mocking me, Mademoiselle?’ Vertue looked almost nervous.

‘Most certainly not,’ replied I. ‘It has always been plain to me that you are the centre which holds this school together. All the students hold you in such high esteem, regard you with so much affection – ’

‘Oh, Mademoiselle! You are quite right,’ purred the little kitten so merrily that for a moment I felt quite chastened. Vertue’s behaviour was harmless enough, besides which was not I perhaps the tiniest bit jealous of how just easily this girl moved through the world, dismissed every challenge as if it were nothing but a slight inconvenience. Not for Vertue Basompierre the hours of needless instropection, the tendency towards dark meditations and even darker reflections.

‘Your sister,’ Vertue continued, ‘she has not accompanied you this time?’

‘She remains at home.’

‘Not ill I hope?’

‘No, she is quite well,’ I said at which point I believe I saw Vertue open her mouth as if to say something further, but thinking better of it she smiled and in this way we both walked in to the refectoire together.

That day and for the next three days I did not see Monsieur Heger – despite sitting with Madame in the evenings in their private apartments. On the fourth day however I received a short note handed to me by Mademoiselle Sophie in which Monsieur hoped I would come to his study at 11.00 am the next morning to recommence our work together, something I did, turning up promptly at the hour desired.

When Emily and I first arrived at the pensionat the previous year it had been a cold bleak winter but nothing compared to how cold it was that February of 1844. The classrooms, the
corridors and most especially the dormitory were all bitter and when Monsieur took my hand to welcome me back, he immediately noted my skin felt like ice.

I tried to make light of it saying he could call me Mademoiselle Winter if he so chose, an alias I believe he enjoyed as oftentimes afterwards he would refer to me by this name.

‘And did you miss me, Mademoiselle Winter?’ he asked.

‘Winter misses nothing, Monsieur.’

‘Surely she looks forward to seeing the Spring?’

I shook my head although a smile did play across my lips for there was a great deal of pleasure in seeing my teacher again. ‘Not at all. Winter is quite happily self-contained,’ I said. ‘She does not require the sun, nor the flowers, nor bees, nor even the leaves on the trees. She walks alone, caring for little, requiring still less – ’

‘It sounds a paltry existence – ’

‘I would say peaceful rather than paltry. Nevertheless I will concede it is strangely pleasant to be back here again – ’

‘You flatter us!’

‘That was not my intention I assure you,’ I said although at the same time presenting my teacher with a small gift – for while I had been packing my trunks back at home I had thought to add a few manuscripts of some of my old stories that I had written when I was younger.

Monsieur received the gifts with pleasure – told me how honoured he was to be allowed to read them although he was as pains to point out that his grasp of English was not as good as my grasp of French.

‘Perhaps we could– ’ he said but then stopped. ‘Do you show your writing to anyone else?’

I replied that no, in this instance – with these pieces – his eyes would be the first to read and
assess my success or failure to which he again made out as if there was a question he wanted to ask me, but at the last minute stopped himself from speaking.

Pleasantries exchanged we turned back to the business of studying. I had been longing to start work again under Monsieur’s eagle eye – even so I had forgotten quite how inspiring a teacher he could be.

Together we read some of Cowper’s verse from a small volume I had brought back with me from England together with one of Monsieur Heger’s favourite poets, Charles Millevoye whose poem
Fall of the Leaves
Monsieur insisted on reading out loud while I closed my eyes in contemplation of both the poem and the voice that was reading it.

Beneath the oak they hollowed out his tomb….

But his beloved did not come to see him,

Never visited the isolated stone.

With the sound of his steps alone

The shepherd of the valley

Disturbed the silence of that mausoleum.

‘It is touching, is it not?’ Monsieur Heger enquired having come to the end of the recital.

‘It is very sorrowful,’ I conceded ‘although I would say that Cowper is the more gifted of the two poets – he is touched by genius whereas Millevoye is clever undoubtedly, but rather studied – ’

‘Cowper is not studied?’

‘His poetry is instinctive, Monsieur – it flows like honey. The language is simpler yet it is
more expressive, purer if you like – ’

‘You do not think Millevoye’s poem a diamond? Every facet faultlessly executed?’

‘That would suggest perfection Monsieur and I do not – ’

‘I believe if you were to examine Millevoye’s style, perhaps even to dissect the poem you would find the work useful – ’

‘Perhaps, but when we began our lesson today you suggested that for my next essay I pick a subject of my own choosing – Now you are saying you wish to choose the subject for me! – ’

‘I cannot help myself– ’ here Monsieur Heger paused momentarily. He was standing at the window with his back turned towards me. Outside snow was falling – tiny reticulations of ice drifted silently past the window, obscuring the garden and orchard beyond as everything swirled and shifted, loomed into view then just as quickly disappeared in a haze of white mist.

Monsieur swung around. ‘Mademoiselle, what would you say to your teacher if he asked you to teach him English? Your Wordsworth for instance and your Shikspeare?’

‘Shikspeare?’ I could not help but smile.

‘I have pronounced it incorrectly? You see I am an imbecile, as stupid as a first-year student – could you bear to teach such a man? I would test your patience, I would never compare to you as a student but – you have brought me a gift of your writing – how am I to understand what my pupil talks about in her work without some sort of tutoring myself?’