Confession (22 page)

I made no opposition. There was none to be made.

The tears continued.

He kissed me.

IX

‘Tell me again,’ Marianne Wilke demanded.

We were sitting in the main classroom, just the two of us because five days previous to this, Monsieur and Madame Heger together with their children had set off for Blankenberg. They had been there years before, so Madame Muhl informed me, to take the waters and recuperate and the holiday had been a great success. The students too had dispersed, a succession of carriages drawing up outside as one girl after another was collected in turn by her parents or guardians. Mademoiselle Blanche left to go to Paris, Mademoiselle Sophie to Rheims and Madame Muhl had headed for Switzerland to stay with her brother.

‘Again!’ Marianne demanded grinning and rocking backwards and forwards. ‘I want to hear it again!’

For the third time that morning I read the first chapter of
Paul et Virginie
, one of the stories contained in the book Monsieur had left me.

‘Situated on the eastern side of the mountain which rises above Port Louis,’ I began, ‘in the Mauritius, upon a piece of land bearing the marks of former cultivation, are seen the ruins of two small cottages. These ruins are not far from the centre of a valley, formed by immense rocks, and which opens only towards the north. On the left rises the mountain called the Height of Discovery, whence the eye marks the distant sail when it first touches the verge of the horizon, and whence the signal is given when a vessel approached the island. – ’
¹⁷

The words soothed Marianne and to a lesser extent they soothed me also for by reading aloud the silence was filled.

Not that I minded it terribly. On the first day after the exodus I had walked the corridors and entered the rooms in what I can only describe as mild elation. Not having to teach was a joy. Not having to make meaningless conversation. I sat in the garden until well past midnight, watching the moon as she rose in the sky, scattering the pathways with her benign, silvery light.

‘Again,’ demanded Marianne.

‘But you have heard it three times!’

Her face fell and I let out a sigh. With her childlike behaviour she was both the best and worst of companions. Her angelic smile and the pleasure she took in the simplest tasks counterbalanced by a pitiful restriction in almost everything she said and did.

Yet she was my only companion for the next several weeks.

Soon I was avoiding her company as frequently as I was able.

My escape when I decided I had had enough of Marianne’s company – took a strange form at first, for rather than leave the Pensionat, I decided to investigate the rooms on the second floor of the building, that is to say Monsieur & Madame’s private apartments which included both their own and their childrens’ bedrooms, a nursery and a small drawing room which the Hegers kept for themselves rather than using the more public one on the ground floor. It was this room in particular I wanted to visit although the whole of the second floor proved as intriguing as might a ghost one has heard of but never seen with ones own eyes.

Only a few servants remained in the Pensionat over the summer therefore it was easy enough
to slip downstairs one night after they had retired to bed.

Opening the drawing room door my candle flickered unevenly, throwing dark shadows across the walls of the room, shadows which loomed up as if having recently escaped from a grave. The shadows danced and bore down on me making the room a very strange place indeed however as my eyes grew accustomed to the light I saw how in almost every detail the room was almost an exact replica of the one downstairs.

How very odd I thought, that there should be two identical rooms in the same house one for public and one for private use. I could only imagine what Mrs Jenkins would make of such profligacy. Only a few days before I had taken a short walk around the city with my friend and she had again made reference to the extravagance of the natives, calling in to question not only their dress sense but also the way in which they decorated their churches as if the buildings were some kind of confectionary.

‘I do wish they would stop dabbling about with cherries and icing sugar,’ she said as loudly as politeness would permit. ‘Churches are for worship not for feasting the eyes upon, it is most distracting– ’

But in one area Monsieur & Madame Heger’s second drawing room did offer some degree of soberness for above the fireplace hung a full-length portrait of Madame bordered by a plain mahogany frame. Not that I noticed the picture immediately for I was far too preoccupied with looking at all the books that lay round about, studying their titles to see what I might learn, but on sitting down momentarily to take stock of my surroundings I felt I was being watched and lifting my eyes to the space above the mantelpiece, it came as quite a shock to find my Directrice staring down from above.

The candle I was holding flickered, as did Madame’s eyes as if she had suddenly come to
life. I should not be there, that is what she was saying. I should not be in that room and yet, although I still knew how to distinguish between what was right and what was wrong, I continued to linger there and on more than one occasion over that summer returned to it although as a means of escape I soon preferred taking myself into the city rather than sitting alone in the house.

Brussels during the summer is not a lively environment, most of its citizens having left for the spa towns of Germany or France or for the cooler breezes and gentler pleasures of coastal resorts such as Ostend.

There followed a time when I would set out early each morning to investigate this ghost city on foot. The streets shimmered in the heat, wave upon wave of it pounded down from above, the sun was relentless, yet despite this I enjoyed my outings. I liked walking along the near-empty boulevards and wide, tree-lined avenues that wove to and fro.

In the old part of the city – the Basse Ville – I took pleasure in studying the architecture and the brooding sense of times past. Crumbling facades adorned with ivy and any number of other creeping plants, were complemented by equally crumbling gardens whose shrubbery poked out from between rusting railings.

I enjoyed sitting in the Municipal Gardens under the broad-leaved avenues of linden trees, occasionally hearing a band play for the amusement of the occasional passer-by. I liked to watch the fashionable ladies out riding on horseback, those who had not seen fit to leave Brussels, accompanied by their equally fashionable husbands – and the tradesmen as they plied their trades, the flower markets being a particularly enchanting place to visit. But soon these pleasures diminished. Soon I began walking for the sake of walking. I did it
because I could not bear to return to the Pensionat to sit by myself in the empty classrooms filled only with shadows.

Monsieur Heger had wondered if I should not be lonely during the holidays with no company to speak of and I had replied that far from feeling lonely I was going to relish my time with no interruptions.

The reality could not have been further from the truth.

Instead of tranquillity I discovered torment for while I sat alone, was not Madame Heger enjoying the company of her husband? While I paced the near-empty house, a prisoner of my own dark imaginings was not Madame Heger in the loving arms of her family? Most people are frightened of being haunted, of being visited by spectres during the night but I tell you – being the phantom is no pleasure either for it would have starved a wraith to live in such a manner as this. The only human contact I had was that of Marianne Wilke, the aforementioned handful of household servants and Mademoiselle Blanche who arrived back earlier than expected from Paris. The return of any one of the other teachers, Mademoiselle Sophie or Mademoiselle Haussé for example, and I would have been overjoyed to see them. We might have shared a few walks into the countryside or visited a museum together, but Mademoiselle Blanche and I barely exchanged a word. If she entered a room, I would immediately vacate it. If I chanced upon her in the garden, she would walk in the opposite direction. The only time we sat together was in the Refectoire where we took our meals but she sat at one end of the table and I at the other.

My spirits continued to fail me. My only true companion during this time was memory. I pored over the essays I had written for Monsieur – read and re-read the notes and comments he had made in the margins, closed my eyes to recall the hours I had spent in his company,
dwelt on that last snatched moment of intimacy.

But one crumb does not a meal make.

I faded.

Catching sight of myself in the mirror one evening, it took me several moments to recognize my own face and establish that the sunken eyes I saw before me were in fact my own.

Melancholy descended like a mist. I could not write, I could not read. In particular I wanted to study the religious tract that Monsieur Heger had given me. If I read the text closely enough – or so ran my train of thought – might I not begin to see the beauties of Monsieur’s beliefs? Romanism could not
all
be cloven-hoofed chicanery, surely? But my mind would have none of it. I was too distracted. I would read a paragraph then moments later forget what it was I had read. Or I would begin a sentence only to find my eyes wandering from the page to the scene outside the window. Nor did the ideas I
did
grasp hold me in any great thrall.

The Stations of the Cross were perhaps the least likely to offend, but when I came to a chapter explaining the Indulgences, I could not help but think these Catholics simpletons. As for the idea that one might be able to pray a lost soul out of Purgatory, surely more solace was to be had in the knowledge that no such place as Purgatory existed? Like Hades it was fanciful – albeit that Hades was where I now resided.

One night a storm hit the city. I had eaten supper early and alone for by this point Marianne Wilke had been collected by an Aunt on her father’s side who thought better than to leave the child throughout the entire holidays while her parents sojourned abroad, while Mademoiselle Blanche had taken herself out to visit some friends.

Supper over I took a walk around the garden. The past few weeks had been hot with brilliant
sunshine decking the skies from early morning until nightfall. Now I noticed a stirring in the trees, the leaves rustling noisily overhead and by the time I retired to bed near on midnight the shutters in the empty dormitory were beginning to rattle and crack.

I opened a window and suddenly the storm blew full force against me, rain slashed the darkness, driving across my face as gust after gust of wind screamed around the eaves of the building. I might have been up on the moors rather than in the centre of a city and for a moment the pleasure I felt at the storm’s strength flooded my body. I opened my arms out wide.

Perhaps this was all I needed to shake me from my torpor? Perhaps this was God’s way of showing me that, yes, my master might be out of reach but that my
true
Master, was very much present.

The next morning I took myself out as soon as the sun rose above the skyline. The streets were scattered with debris, smashed slates from the rooftops and branches from the trees lay strewn across the roads.

I walked out of the city to the Protestant Cemetery and beyond that to the fields and hills that stretched as far as the horizon. Exhaustion was my aim. I reasoned that if I walked far enough and for long enough then I might find some peace of mind, for still I felt tormented, but even when I returned to the city later that evening, I was not ready to return to the Pensionat to sit in absolute silence.

Instead I found myself standing outside the Church of Ste Gudule. Its dark towers rose before me, beckoning me inside. I had passed by this building a hundred times yet had never before stopped to give it a thought. Every day I had listened to its bells ringing Matins and Vespers
yet had never seen fit to enter its portals.

Now I hesitated.

Monsieur worshipped at this church, surely that was recommendation enough?

The bells began to toll for evening Salut.

Inside was dark and cool. That was my first impression. Then, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light I became aware of four, pale grey marble columns each speckled unevenly with dark green markings like those of a pheasant’s egg. For a time I leant against one of these columns drinking in my surroundings, breathing in the sweet smell of incense mixed with polish and wax.

Echoes bounded off the high ceilings. An old woman sitting in one of the pews turned the page of her prayer book and the sound filled the air. A young boy sitting with his mother turned to look at me and smiled. I crossed the floor and sat down in an empty pew just as Vespers began.

‘O God, come to my assistance’, sang the priest together with the small congregation, ‘O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen. Alleluia.’

These were the words Monsieur Heger had recited ever since he was a child, these were his rituals. Whatever Romanism represented to me surely I could be allowed to believe that at least one amongst their number was worthy of my respect?

Throughout the whole hour I sat transfixed.

Even when the service finished I did not move. On my left was an antechamber in which sat a small band of worshippers who remained kneeling next to what I quickly realized were the Confessionals.

In two of the Confessionals priests sat. I watched as one by one the worshippers filed in to make their confessions.

‘Hogwash!’ Emily’s voice echoed inside my head. ‘Absolute balderdash and hogwash!’ The two of us had poked fun at this ritual on so many occasions, had mocked Romanism’s priest-craft whenever the opportunity presented itself, it made me smile to find myself seated here.

But what harm could it do? What harm was there in entering the Confessional? After all I
had
a confession to make, had I not?

The young woman kneeling next to me stood up and entered the booth. Minutes later she reappeared again. Did I imagine it or was she less stooped than before, brighter of countenance?