Confession (21 page)

Madame Heger returned from her cousin’s ten days later. I was teaching in the main classroom when I noticed her standing at the back of the room, dark as a shadow. But far from interrupting my lesson as I supposed she might, she left the room silently only to catch up with me later that afternoon while I sat reading in the garden under the shade of a large copper beach.

‘You are well I hope, Mademoiselle?’

‘Who could not be well in weather such as this,’ I replied shading my eyes from the sun as I looked up at her face. Light dappled her cheeks. She looked well.

‘Your book is good? You seem quite engrossed – ’

‘It is a novel.
St Ronan’s Well
. By Walter Scott – ’

Madame shook her head.

‘He is quite brilliant. We read him a lot in England although by birth he is of course Scottish – you might have heard of his other novels,
Waverley
or
Rob Roy
perhaps?’

‘Rob Roy?’ she echoed.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Set during the Jacobite Rebellion. Scott writes very knowledgeably and with such imagination and passion – ’

Madame nodded but she was clearly uninterested.

Her eyes looked bored.

I closed my book.

‘It is so very hot, isn’t it,’ she said fanning herself whilst looking around her distractedly. ‘Do you find it difficult, this heat?’

‘Not especially, Madame – ’

‘Of course not, no,’ she said lightly dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief before taking a
seat next to me on the bench. ‘Your lesson this morning… it was very good. I must commend you upon it. You are enjoying teaching, I suppose?’

‘Being a teacher will never come naturally to me – ’

‘But you are so well suited to it, I think. Not everyone has the ability to guide others, to sacrifice their own expectations in order that their students might thrive – ’

I lowered my head. A gesture Madame sadly mistook for humility whereas in truth it was anger. Who was she to judge what I excelled at? Who was she to confine me to the role of teacher? – a woman whose horizons barely extended beyond the four walls of the pensionat, who had suffered neither loneliness nor despair. Mediocrity – that was her name.

I watched as Madame distractedly brushed a wasp away from her skirt then lightly brought her hand to rest on her stomach. ‘I have embarrassed you?’ she said. ‘But I speak as I find. Everyone in that classroom has improved: Vertue, Emilie, Constance, even Hortense Lannoy. And your lessons with Monsieur, they are still agreeable?’

‘Agreeable?’ Dumbly I repeated the word. On her lips it sounded so dull –

‘I am told you had an accident a few days ago? With some ink?’ she added glancing down at my dress as if the mark might remain.

‘It was nothing.’

‘But you were seen crying. Was it your best dress?’

‘Crying, Madame? That is a nonsense. It was a small accident, that is all, nothing but a small accident, a bit of ink that washed out quite easily. The dress is as good as new, indeed you would never know it had been stained.’

‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I am so glad.’

Now Madame looked at me with a curious expression. Her face seemed calm, her forehead
untroubled by lines or any other disagreeable feature and her eyes steady and bright.

What she saw in me was far less apparent. Perhaps it was better for both us that that remained unknown.

Not that we saw each other much in the weeks following this exchange, leastways not to talk to. Nor did I see Monsieur Heger except for on one occasion when I caught him talking with his wife early one evening after classes had finished.

I had gone to the refectory in order to find a quiet corner in which to read but on opening the door caught a glimpse of Monsieur at the far end of the room just as he was turning away from Madame.

The room was dark, lit only by two small lamps so it was not easy to see Madame’s face but I could tell she was wiping her eyes.

She had been crying.

Quickly I closed the door behind me and returned to the schoolrooms where Vertue Basompierre entreated me to help her with an English translation.

Ever since Monsieur Heger, Marianne and I had met Vertue & her guardians at the Carnival a sort of
entente cordial
had sprung up between us. Now, instead of teasing me about my unfashionable clothes or the way in which I dressed my hair, she defended me against all insults. It was a relief therefore to throw myself into helping Vertue with her homework although she was more inclined to leave me to do most of the labour for she was indolent of mind – that much would never change no matter if her life depended upon it.

While I worked, Vertue chattered, leaning against me companionably. ‘What are you going to do during the long summer holidays, Mademoiselle? I myself am to go to Germany and
afterwards to Paris and perhaps even London. I have relatives who live near Piccadilly – cousins of Mama’s – ’

‘And your young gentleman friend? Georges was it? What of him?’ Will he visit you?’

Vertue shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Who knows. He has been rather tiresome of late – ’

I laughed and Vertue smiled.

‘But you have not answered my question yet,’ she said. ‘What are
you
going to do?’

‘Me?’ I said. ‘I shall stay here.’

‘By yourself?’

‘There will be others, I am sure. Marianne Wilke will be here and Madame Haussé I believe will stay on. And Monsieur and Madame Heger – ’

‘Oh no, I don’t think so – Monsieur and Madame are to go away for the holidays. They will not stay in the city during August – It is far too hot and besides it smells – ’

‘But Monsieur and Madame stayed here last year – ’

‘So they did! How very peculiar, perhaps it was because of the baby? That must have been it. But this year they are definitely going away. Madame told me as much herself only last week – ’

‘Last week,’ I heard my voice echoing. ‘She never said.’

Vertue smiled. If she noticed my disappointment she kept it to herself.

Seconds later the bell for supper rang and we filed alongside everyone else, into the refectory where Madame Heger sat at the top table.

No trace of tears marked her face. They had vanished as completely as the ink stain on my dress. Indeed had I not witnessed them myself, I would never have believed they had happened.

VIII

I found the next set of books on the morning of what was to be our last lesson together before the school holidays.

A whole month had passed since I had been able to speak at length with Monsieur. Occasionally we would pass each other in a corridor or I would catch him watching me as I walked in the gardens, but no contact was made. Instead I endured a month of perfunctory routines. Mealtimes, lesson-times, bedtimes. Nothing happened in between which was not scheduled. The sun rose at four every morning and did not set until well past ten every night, yet despite the extended hours of daylight, my mood grew daily more sombre. Mary Dixon bid farewell to Brussels and I found myself yearning to be in her company again. At night I paced my narrow part of the dormitory – unseen by others, restless, distracted. Sometimes I would sit by the window, a shawl wrapped around my shoulders trying to write down my thoughts, arrange them in some kind of order, but nothing came of it for I cared for nothing, feared nothing, enjoyed nothing until I found the books nestled inside my desk.

They were small, unassuming volumes – a two-set edition of the works of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre together with a slim religious tract, which had it not been for the lingering smell of cigar smoke, I might have overlooked altogether.

I picked the Saint-Pierre up eagerly, leafed through its pages before inscribing it with the words ‘The Gift of Monsieur Heger, Brussels, August 15
^th
1843’. For weeks now I had been hoping to find just such a gift. That none had appeared only added to the steep decline in my spirits and the beginnings of an unnatural bitterness for I had begun to blame Madame Heger for Monsieur’s avoiding me. She was Mediocrity personified, Dullness made flesh, small-
minded to the extent that she was preventing her husband from teaching me. Sense told me this could not be the case yet when I came to sit down and write my next essay I used my frustration against her. I did not mean to, but that is what I did. I wrote my anger out – then gave the essay to Constance de Breuil to deliver to Monsieur’s study.

Its title was
The Death of Napoleon
.

Two days later I received a message that Monsieur would like to see me for a lesson later that afternoon.

His study door was closed. I knocked softly then, a few seconds later, a little harder. It was extremely hot that day and prickles of sweat formed on my brow, down my arms, yet my hands remained cold.

When the door opened he would not look at me but ushered me in with a sweep of his hand. Despite my nervousness I entered quickly, unable to disguise the relief I felt at once again being inside this room. Here more than any other place in the school, I felt more myself, I was no longer that half-woman pacing the classrooms as she drilled her students in the finer points of English. In this room that woman did not exist. She was dead, buried, cold in her grave.

I sat down at my desk upon which Monsieur had laid out my essay.

‘ “The Death of Napoleon?” ’ he said frowning then folding his arms as he watched me.

‘That was the subject, yes – ’

‘Could you not have thought of a pleasanter topic? – ’

‘My mind was inclined otherwise, Monsieur,’ I replied glancing down at the slashings of ink and legions of notes he had scrawled across my work. ‘You did say I could choose the next
subject –’

‘But his
death
?’

We stared at each other. Despite there being a window open the room was hot. A late ray of sunshine fell across the floor drawing my eyes away from his to watch how the light danced across the floorboards. My eyes flicked back to his. He was still watching me. My stomach jolted.

‘Monsieur?’

‘I have been working very hard at the Athénée, I’m afraid. I have been asked to give the Speech-Day Address, it is a very great honour – ’

‘Which you shall no doubt acquit very well – ’

‘But I have missed our lessons,’ he said. ‘Have you missed our lessons?’

‘A little, not much, I cannot properly recall…’

He smiled. ‘I have seen you in the garden. Three days ago you sat next to the wall over there with Marianne Wilke – you were drawing in your sketchbook while she sat and sewed and yesterday evening you were reading a book whilst walking under the apple trees – you stopped to look up at something in the branches – ’

‘You were spying on me?’

‘No, I was looking out of my window.’

This time it was my turn to smile. ‘I was reading
Coriolanus
,’ I said.

‘ “You are no surer, no,/Than is the coal of fire upon the ice/Or hailstone in the sun” That is correct, is it not?’

‘You committed it to memory – ’

‘Your essay echoes him in places – there are touches of brilliance there and yet …it is curious
too – ’

‘Curious?’ I said blushing for – of course – I knew full well what he meant. I looked out at the garden, tried to concentrate on the way in which the sun was falling through the fruit trees, pale lemon rhomboids of light– anything to quieten my mind, to collect my thoughts. Laughter drifted across the lawns.

‘Mediocrity?’ he said. ‘ “
The distinctive quality of mediocrity is moderation, a quality precious but cold.
”’

I looked down at my hands, made as if I were studying them.

‘Mademoiselle your essay is entitled the “Death of Napoleon” which for the time being I shall ignore. But you begin your essay not with Bonaparte but with this digression on Genius versus
Mediocrity
…’

‘Did I? I forget now - ’

‘Shall I remind you?’

‘Don’t!’ I entreated but my plea fell on deaf ears for Monsieur Heger had already swept up my essay and was striding towards the window where, with is back turned towards me, he began to read.

“
…Thus one cannot deny mediocrity the right to judge genius, yet it does not follow that her judgment is sound. The distinctive quality of mediocrity is temperance, a quality precious but cold; more often the result of a meek temperament. Mediocrity can see the faults of Genius – its imprudence, its temerity, its ambition – but she is too
cold
,’
he said emphasizing the word cold, ‘
too
restrictive
, too
egotistical
to understand its struggles, its suffering, its pain; she is jealous too, and so its very virtues appear to her under a false and imperfect light…”

‘
Perhaps I judged Mediocrity a little too harshly,’ I said knowing immediately that Monsieur
Heger had guessed my meaning.

‘A certain meekness is not such a bad gift to possess,’ he said ‘Meekness is not unpleasant – ’

‘Genius is often very clumsy – She speaks out of turn.’

‘She is fierce,’ he said. ‘Fierce, gifted, passionate – these are her gifts – ’

‘But sometimes she acts before she thinks. She is rash. That is her weakness – ’

‘Her position is difficult – ’

‘Not as difficult as yours,’ I said for by now I was completely at sea. Behind me lay a distant shoreline. Beyond me desolate landscapes, solitudes without horizon –

‘In two days the school closes for the summer. We are to go abroad – ’

‘And yet I am abroad already,’ I replied – a note of desperation catching at the back of my throat. On the floor the patch of sunlight still danced against the boards, jumped and quivered as if it were alive.

Monsieur looked at it too then quietly closed the window and crossed the room just as I stood up to go.

‘You will find enough to occupy yourself with over the summer?’

‘You are concerned? – ’

‘Look at me – ’

I looked. My eyes filled with tears. ‘You need not trouble yourself, Monsieur. I am looking forward to the holidays. There will be no interruptions, no students. I have plenty of reading material that someone kindly left in my desk. I shall visit with my friends the Revd & Mrs Jenkins. I believe Marianne Wilke is going to – ’ but here I was interrupted as Monsieur very gently placed one finger against my lips.