Confession (2 page)

‘There is an hour before we take diner,’ announced Vertue trailing her hands over a couple of desks. ‘You can stay here if you want. Your desks are there near the front, next to each other, or you can go back to the dormitory. You will hear a bell when it is time to eat.’ Her instructions left me in no doubt that the last thing Vertue desired was for us to return upstairs where she and her friends would no doubt want to gossip about these queer English interlopers who had landed in their midst.

Once Emily was settled I walked outside to the garden. The bells of Ste Gudule rang for Vespers. It was a comforting sound – yet also an irritation – reminding me yet again that I was a foreigner in more than just body.

I glanced back through the windows to make certain Emily was content. She was sitting with a book open in front of her, but she was not looking at the words. I could tell from the way her shoulders were hunched, her head held at a particular angle. My sister dreamt whole days away without even trying; that is what Aunt said. She would stare into mid air as if angels were dancing on the tip of her nose.

‘Not everything is visible to the human eye,’ Emily would argue. ‘There are invisible worlds all around us, choirs of angels – each and every one of them commissioned to guard us.’

I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders against the chill wind and walked down a white gravel path, first through an orchard of apple and plum trees then afterwards to a darker, more sequestered part of the garden thick with a marriage of jasmine and vine. From a half-open window came the murmur of French voices, the gentle lilt of a foreign tongue. So this is what it meant to be in the world! I had travelled from home before and rung every last drop
of hope from those experiences, but this was different. Not since Emily and I had sat down as children and composed our strange little romances, did I feel the same roar of excitement; the same certainty that I had been marked for something special. Does that sound arrogant? Conceited? It is not meant to be.

I came to stand next to a tall tree whose branches reached the uppermost eves of the building. Only then did I realize I was being observed. High above me two small faces peered out of a window. For a moment I stood and stared at these ghostly visions; the two little girls – for they were the aforementioned Heger children - caught in the ungenerous act of spying.

How impudent, I thought! how rude to trespass on my privacy for by then I had claimed the garden as my own whereas in truth neither it nor the house belonged to me.
I
was the stranger in this antique land, though which ruler and what lie he told, I was yet to discover.

The refectory, where we ate supper that first evening and all our subsequent meals, was a narrow room situated on the ground floor of the building. It was furnished with long wooden tables above which hung oil lamps. All of the walls were whitewashed and were empty of decoration, all except one in the centre of which hung a large painting of the crucifixion. The sight of it made me shudder. We had a crucifix on the altar of our church back in Yorkshire but nothing as heady or tormented as the one in this room. Christ’s eyes were bloodshot, his head thrown back in a convulsion of agony, his torso twisted and brittle as briarwood while Mary Magdalen knelt at his feet, robed in garments bright as arterial blood, her eyes rolling back into her head like those of an animal about to be slaughtered.

Fortunately Emily and I were seated with our backs to the painting otherwise we could not have swallowed our food.

The meal, when it came, consisted of lamb, hard-boiled eggs and some tiny, buttered bread rolls taken with black coffee. Much to my relief Emily ate every last scrap on her plate, as did I for the long journey had made me extremely hungry.

‘Eeez good, yes?’ one of the Belgium girls who was sitting next to Emily asked pointing at the food. Emily made no reply but bent her head in acknowledgment, which seemed satisfactory enough as the girl did not attempt further chatter although the rest of her compatriots talked incessantly throughout the meal.

In addition to the students we were joined by a handful of teachers whom I soon came to know as Mademoiselle Blanche, Mademoiselle Haussé, Mademoiselle Marie, Mademoiselle Sophie and the German instructor, Madame Muhl. These five women sat at the top table furthest away from the door and occasionally turned to speak to each other although there did not seem to be a huge amount of camaraderie between them.

Madame Heger joined her staff towards the end of the meal and a short while afterwards a tall, fair-haired gentleman with skin as soft & white as a freshly-peeled egg, entered the room.

To see a man in the midst of so many women was a curious business although his presence did not overtly affect the girls who had a predisposition to giggle and blush whether they were in the company of a creature in breeches, or not.

Monsiuer Heger – for so I presumed this man to be - smiled at the teaching staff, however I noted that he barely acknowledged his wife other than to give a cursory nod in her direction, nor did they choose to sit near each other.

As the meal drew to a close Monsieur Heger rose from his seat and a hush fell across the room. This was the start of what we soon learnt to be the
Lecture Pieuse
, an event that took
place every evening after supper. Later Madame Heger was at pains to point out that it was unnecessary for either Emily or myself to attend, neither of us being Catholic, however on that evening we both remained in our seats.

But oh! what a queer little event it was – one which I am ashamed to admit immediately re-awoke in me the clouded view of religion I had harboured ever since Aunt had attempted to drum into me her type of Methodism. This time however it was the Catholic Church that brought me out in a rash for if there was ever an hour during which Reason was soundly defeated, Intellect trampled underfoot, the hour of the
Lecture Pieuse
was it.

Monsieur Heger’s voice, thin and reed-like, droned on monotonously. It was the type of voice that spoke of long hours spent in prayer, strait gates, meagre rations. I did not like it one jot, but even so I attempted to pay attention, after all it was good practice for my ear to grow accustomed to the new cadences of the language, but alas my attentiveness did not last long. My mind drifted; was that Vertue sneezing behind me? Did I just see that bovine girl at the end of our table stifle a giggle? What was it Madame Heger kept looking at?

Our directrice sat studying her students, her eyes darting about the room. One minute she was nodding approval at the way in which a particular girl sat listening to the lecture, the next she was narrowing her eyes when she thought someone was fidgeting.

Nothing escaped her notice although at this stage I did not realise how true an observation this was or how dark a shadow it would cast over my life.

That night in the dormitory Emily and I drew our curtain for privacy. We did not want to speak with the others who quickly changed into their white nightdresses and, until the lights were turned down, flitted between each other’s beds, thin as moonlight.

There was much giggling. Our ignorance of current fashions gave these creatures a great deal of pleasure. One of their number, Grace Giradoux I believe, commented on Emily’s style of dress – the leg of mutton sleeves she favoured, the lack of full petticoats and the muted colours she wore. Her words hurt. They were shabby. They were words that knew nothing of where we had come from, nor where we were headed.

‘Our first night in Brussels,’ Emily sighed as she knelt by her bed to say her prayers. I knelt down too although I could not concentrate on what I was saying because I was happy and that was too infrequent an experience. Everything that had happened over the past few days seemed so exquisitely beautiful. The intricacies of the London streets. St Paul’s Cathedral – the dome of which had hovered above us – the most serene and wondrous of angels. The majesty of our ship – not to mention the sea that had looked pure as silver. I had never crossed a sea before, nor felt water on my face that tasted of salt, nor been in a country where I could not speak the language. Would my dreams be different now that I had to speak French? Did this new language possess the subtleties of English? I stood up and crossed the room to look out the window.

A moon was in the sky, a pale silver disc caught in the branches of a nearby tree. In a land where everything else was foreign, she at least was no stranger.

‘What is that?’ I said turning around to see Emily placing something under her pillow.

‘It is to remind me of home. A stone I picked up. On Blackstone Edge.’

‘Blackstone?’

Emily nodded. ‘Perhaps it will bring us good fortune.’ Her voice trailed off as she closed her eyes. ‘Goodnight,’ she said.

‘Goodnight,’ I replied and then again very quietly… ‘goodnight.’

II

For the first four or five days in Brussels the rain did not stop. I had thought home a dank place but Brussels could lay equal claim to the description although in a city the rain is duller. Nor was that the only observation I made during those first few weeks for it was as if my very skin had grown eyes so sensitive did it feel to every change in light and difference in sound. I opened a door and the touch of the handle was cooler and smoother than at home. The sound my footsteps made when I walked across the wooden floors of the classroom were louder than I was used to. Light appeared warmer, coffee sweeter, water clearer. If I had died then risen again the world could not have been more vibrant. Not that we had much opportunity during those first few weeks to explore further than the school environs for we were too preoccupied with our studies to sightsee.

Our lessons began each morning at nine and stopped at noon for lunch. In the afternoons we were taught from two o’clock until four and after we had taken our evening meal we again returned to the schoolroom for an hour’s study followed by the
Lecture Pieuse
then soon afterwards bed.

The lessons themselves were for the most part confined to History, French Literature, a little German, Music & Drawing. Madame Heger – when she was not occupied with the day-today running of her school – took this latter class for she was quite the draughtswoman and evidently enjoyed the process of teaching. The pains she took with the older students were unlike any I had experienced back in England although her criticisms were sharp.

Nevertheless she praised Emily & I frequently during our first lesson – observing that Emily showed a fine eye for detail while my mastery of shadow & light was nothing short of
commendable.

Other than this my sister and I confined our studies to French grammar which meant endlessly declining verbs, memorising tenses followed by the copying and translating of vast amounts of vocabulary.

‘Forget your mother tongue,’ our French teacher, a Monsieur Pouilly from the city of Lille, instructed in his clipped voice. He sounded like a pair of Aunt’s silver scissors.

‘Do not speak English, especially between yourselves and soon you will be writing and dreaming in French. You should talk to the other students as much as possible; they will help you enormously. Pronunciation is key.’

Monsieur Pouilly liked the sound of his own voice but he was well meaning enough although sadly misguided for Emily and I had no intention of engaging with the other students. We were not interested in them and they were solely interested in their fine silks and ribbons.

Instead we whispered phrases back and forth between each other; we were like two newborn calves wobbling unsteadily in our first attempts at walking. If I stumbled Emily helped and encouraged me and vice-a-versa. We sat side by side at our desks, reading and absorbing everything. Knowledge is a journey of sorts, is it not? And the further one travels, the more easily one can interpret the landscape. Day by day our skills improved, our understanding of how far we had come and how much further we had to go, increased. It was not a romantic journey; there were no stars or snow-capped mountains glittering in the distance. The path was not strewn with rose petals nor was it moonlit, indeed dark clouds hovered ahead.

‘Why not?’ Vertue cornered me alone in the schoolroom early one evening when Emily had gone upstairs to fetch her shawl. ‘If you sit next to me you will learn more.

I can teach you a
lot.’

‘I sit next to my sister.’

‘But it is not the law to sit next to her, is it?’ she snapped then tried, unsuccessfully, to turn her scowl in to a smile. ‘I thought you would like to sit beside me. Tell me about yourself. Who are you? Which part of England do you come from?’

‘Yorkshire,’ I said.

There was a pause. ‘That is to the north, is it not?’

‘Not if you live in Scotland,’ I replied.

‘But I do not live in Scotland! I live in Paris. Please sit next to me, it would be so amusing to have someone English as a companion – ’

‘I sit next to my sister,’ I repeated dumbly as I did not wish to offend.

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-six.’ Twenty-six, plain, unmarried, a spinster for life – if Vertue’s eyes could have spoken this is what they’d have said.

‘Your sister,’ she continued ‘wears her hair strangely. But you do not. She should look more to you, don’t you think?’

‘My sister is free to do as she wishes.’

‘But would you not agree that…’

‘No,’ I snapped ‘and I would thank you to leave my sister in peace.’

Vertue shrugged and stuck out her bottom lip like the petulant little madam she was. Her eyes, which only moments before had been dancing, turned to stone. She could look exceedingly ugly when she did not get her own way.

‘As you like, she sniffed and then, ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

‘Tell them what?’ I said. It was not one minute since we had begun this conversation and already its pettiness bored me.

‘That you have declined to sit next to me. Promise me you will not tell anyone. We will pretend I never asked, shall we?’ Her face brightened at this idea, the stubborn lower lip was withdrawn and it occurred to me then that what she wanted was not my collusion so much as my intimacy.