Confession (24 page)

‘At this hour? She is asleep. You should be too – ’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You are not cold?’

Turning around to face him I shook my head. ‘No.’

‘You seemed out of sorts this evening – ’

‘No,’ I said again.

There are times when being alone with someone is markedly more intense than at others, more severe. Why it should be on that particular night, at first I could not understand. Then it struck me. There was no moon. There were no stars. Poetry had been struck dumb.

There was only the two of us; Monsieur Heger and myself.

‘Do you think me a bully? ’ he said.

‘You were taking an interest in what I read over the summer, in what I might have worked on

– you always talk to me like that. It is how we talk – the summer was very quiet without you

– ’

‘You missed me then?’

‘Did I say that? I think you will find I did not. I found a hundred and one things to do while you were away and although I only read novels, those I chose were excellent – ’ A short gust of wind and a flurry of raindrops unexpectedly fell from the trees cutting me short.

‘And the pamphlet I left you?’

‘We both enjoy reading whatever we are given – ’

‘You
did
read it then?’

‘I looked through it, yes – ’

‘It did not touch you?’

In the dark I could hear Monsieur Heger leaning closer, he was straining to see my reaction.

Finally I said, ‘We are more alike than you think. We both believe in God, do we not? We both attend church, read the Bible? Why dwell upon differences when so much between us is familiar – ’

‘But if you followed the Holy Church – ’

‘You are a good man, Monsieur. Whatever reservations I harbour concerning your beliefs, I know you are a good man. Could you not do me the same honour? Could you not treat me as an equal in this matter and – ’

‘Were it that simple – ’

‘But it is,’ I said bluntly. ‘All your ecclesiastical tinsel has blinded you. Can’t you see that? All that gold work and filigree – ’

Suddenly Monsieur Heger let out a laugh so loud it might have shaken the house. ‘I have missed this!’ declared he.

‘This?’

‘Your frankness. Who else would argue against me like you do or come out here on a night such as this? It is pitch black and pouring with rain. Soon the wind will get up, there could well be a storm yet I doubt you would go back inside – what is it about you –?’

‘There is nothing about me, Sir – ’

‘Oh but there is. There is so much more to you than even you know. Even Madame Heger sees it – ’

‘What does she see? – ’

Rain began to fall harder. Thin streams of it fell down my face. I could taste it on my lips.

‘She sees herself – ’ he said finally. ‘You show her everything that she is not – ’

‘But
I
am not anything – She is the one with a home, children, her work from which she earns a good income. A husband – ’

‘Yet still you possess what she never will – You have a mind Mademoiselle, a fierce intellect, a strange forcefulness – ’

‘A mind!’ I laughed. ‘An intellect! What are they in comparison to – ’ the rain fell harder. I could not distinguish the leaves from the sound the rain made, nor the sound the rain made from the buildings surrounding us. It clicked and tapped and pattered. I could hear it clattering against the windowpanes of the house, sluicing through the gutters.

‘But they are everything,’ he said calmly. ‘They are what makes you different. Without them, what would you be? You would be like all the rest of us and you are not. So what is it you want? What do you
want
?’

*

Madame Heger looked up from her knitting and smiled, ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Is
there something I can do for you?’

‘I would like to go home,’ I said quietly.

In the corner of the room baby Prospére sat on his nursemaid’s knee gurgling. It was early afternoon – I had chosen the moment because I knew Monsieur would be at the Athenée.

‘I do not understand,’ Madame said. ‘Have you received a letter?’

I shook my head. ‘I realise it will be inconvenient – ’

Prospére let out a small shriek and Madame laid down her knitting. ‘Bring him to me,’ she said holding her arms out to receive the child. ‘He has not been at all well recently. He caught a chill a few nights ago – ’ Her concern was palpable. She laid one hand on his brow, left it there for a few seconds before turning back to me. ‘Is it your father? Is he sick?’

‘I have been here almost nine months,’ I faltered. ‘I would like to go home, that is all.’

Madame Heger ran her hand over Prospére’s head. She was perfectly poised on the settee, dressed in pale lilac silk, a tiny gold cross inlaid with amethysts hung at her neck. The cross glittered in the lamplight.

‘I have to admit it has struck me before now that you have not been happy here. Perhaps you miss your sister’s company? You never join the other teachers, do you? Indeed you rarely if ever join us here in the evenings at all. Mademoiselle Blanche was only just saying how – ’ ‘Mademoiselle Blanche has no right,’ I replied surprised not so much at my bluntness but by how un-charming I suddenly felt Madame Heger to be. If – as she had announced– she thought me unhappy why had she never asked if anything was amiss? She was cold, that was the reason. She was cold and self-centred in a way only a woman in her position could be.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly as Prospere pressed his face against his mother’s chest.

‘It
is
probably for the best that you leave us, the timing however could not be worse. How on earth am I to find a replacement at such short notice? Term has only just begun – you leave me in a very awkward position – ’

‘I am sure there are plenty of English teachers in Brussels who would be glad of a position here – ’

‘But not you it seems – ’

‘I would like to go home.’

‘So you keep saying and yet you were so eager to return to us, weren’t you? I was only just saying to Constantin how eager you were when the subject was first broached’ here Madame Heger’s voice trailed off. Suddenly it was as if she were a million miles away, perhaps back when she wrote to our father suggesting I return to the Pensionat as a teacher. ‘We were very kind to offer you a teaching position, wouldn’t you agree? After all, your experience was minimal – ’

‘I have acquitted my duties satisfactorily, you have said so yourself – ’

‘Quite so – ’

‘And I am grateful – ’

‘Yet it does not appear that way.’

‘I have felt increasingly homesick, Madame. We are a close-knit family, as I think you understand. Being this far from home has begun to take its toll. I had thought I would be able to keep it under control but –’

‘Homesickness. I cannot say I have ever experienced such an illness myself. Other sicknesses of course – the human spirit is such a strange thing. The human heart even more so – or so I am led to believe – ’

‘Madame?’

‘Never mind,’ she said quietly.

I reached out a hand to touch Prospére’s cheek. ‘He is a beautiful child.’

‘I am very fortunate with my family. Perhaps you would like to hold him?’

‘I think he prefers to stay with you,’ I replied then added, ‘I will not leave the Pensionat until you have secured another teacher to take my place. That is the very least I can do – ’

Madame smiled and I turned to leave the room, relieved that she could not see how my eyes brimmed with tears for would she ever have understood the truth, whatever the truth may have been.

I told no one my secret that night. For a time I sat in the classroom numbed by what I had done then afterwards – in an attempt to occupy my mind with something less painful – I took up my pen and wrote a short paragraph. Re-reading it I began tightening each sentence, scoring out unnecessary words, deleting an entire line, not altogether unaware even then that each correction bore the hallmark of Monsieur Heger.

His methods infected every sentence, his influences glimmered beneath every image. If Monsieur resided on the other side of Christendom I would hear him yet. His voice would bear down upon me where-so-ever I wandered, to the farthest, darkest regions on God’s earth and beyond.

Can one human being inveigle another?

My answer lay on the page in front of me.

I picked up my pen and wrote a second then a third paragraph. Ideas flowed easily. I am not suggesting the writing was perfect but when a fledgling leaves the nest for the first time to
test its wings, neither does it fly effortlessly, but hops from twig to twig only occasionally becoming airborne.

When I retired to bed later that night – only then did the matter of handing my notice in to Madame return to haunt me. I wondered how long it might take her to find a new teacher? What if she found a replacement quickly, in less than a week perhaps? What then?

When I did finally fall asleep it was only to be wracked by nightmares. I could hear Monsieur Heger’s voice calling out to me, but I could not see him, could not find him in the darkness. I was walking across a desolate landscape – rocks and stones were its only vegetation, a wind-scraped moon its only light.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he shouted then more quietly, ‘Why did you not speak to me first?’

I was standing in Monsieur Heger’s study whilst he, in some agitation, paced backwards and forwards in front of his desk. Madame Heger had told him of my decision to leave almost immediately he had returned from the Athénée.

She had said I had been
quietly insolent
in the manner in which I informed her of my departure, an accusation I most strongly denied.

‘What else did she say?’ I asked trying to imagine the scene between the two of them, the degree to which she had diminished my character in front of her husband.

‘She has much to occupy herself with at present,’ he said referring to her being with child. ‘She says she thinks you unstable. That it would be for the best if you return home to your family because you are miserable here. That we made a mistake in asking you to return to us in the first place, in offering you a position – ’

‘And do you think me unstable?’ I said barely able to think the word let alone speak it.

‘If you are so unhappy, if you are so miserable that you cannot bear to stay here any longer – what else am I to believe?’

‘Quite – ’ I whispered.

‘Quite?’

‘My vocabulary is not to your liking? – ’

‘No, damn it, it is not!’

Monsieur continued to pace backwards and forwards whilst every now and again rounding on me as if to speak then – thinking better of it – remaining silent.

‘When you were in Germany,’ I said, ‘there was a thunderstorm one night. I stood out in it. I wanted to be struck by lightening – ’

‘Is that meant to explain something– ?’

‘How can I stay here? The only person I wish to speak to, to be with – it is impossible. The situation will not change – ’

‘There are still our lessons. We speak to each other during those – ’

I shook my head. ‘You know as well as I do they are less frequent than before. How many weeks has it been since our last lesson? It is not your fault Monsieur, I know this but -’

‘I do not accept what you are saying – you are being selfish – ’

‘Madame will easily find a replacement – ’

‘That is not what I meant– ’

‘My mind is set – ’

‘You are stubborn, Mademoiselle.’

‘Yes,’ I said bluntly for there was nothing else to say.

‘When we were all gathered together with Mademoiselle Blanche that last evening – do you recall? And you excused yourself early because you said you were tired and left us? It was only then – after you had gone – that I saw who else sat in that room – ’

‘All the more reason that I should depart – ’

‘There is no reason whatsoever!’ he shouted, eyes flashing angrily. ‘None whatsoever, do you hear me!’

‘You will exhaust yourself Monsieur - ’ I flashed back. ‘Besides, Madame Heger would find it odd, would she not, if I were to withdraw my resignation so shortly after handing it in?’

‘She would not! She would be relieved.’ Here Monsieur stopped pacing the room. He opened a window through which a skirl of leaves blew in on an icy draft. Previously I had been hovering by the door but now I crossed the room and came to stand by Monsieur Heger’s side.

‘What is the good of coming here to study,’ continued he, ‘of coming here to expand your mind if you are going to bolt when the mood takes you? Has all our work been in vain, do you not wish to continue to learn? I am always telling you that your talents are unequalled, perhaps I have not told you often enough – ’

‘You are being unfair Monsieur – I have only ever wanted to learn. And you have always treated me as an equal, never dismissing my ideas or demanding I abandon my ambitions – ’

‘Yet you are willing to abandon my lessons,’ he replied a little more calmly yet still there was a sharp edge to his voice. ‘I won’t allow it – it is impossible. You shall not leave – ’

‘Monsieur – ’

‘No!’

I looked at him but was unable to speak. Yesterday my course of action had seemed clear. I
had handed in my notice, I would return to England. Now everything was uncertain again. I stood slightly apart from Monsieur and turned my head to look out over the garden. Nothing but the sound of leaves rustled between us, together with the occasional starling screaming over the rooftops and the patter of rain, blurring everything.

I was glad to receive your last letter but when I read it – its contents gave me some pain – it was melancholy indeed that so soon after the death of a sister you should be called away from a distant county by the news of the severe illness of a brother – and that after your return home your sister Anne should fall ill too […]

Mary Taylor is getting on well – as she deserves to do – I often hear from her – her letters and yours are one of my few pleasures. […_]

Notwithstanding Brussels is indeed desolate to me now – since Mary Dixon left I have had no friend […] I cannot count the Belgians as anything – Madame Heger is a politic – plausible and interested person- I no longer trust her – It is a curious position to be so utterly solitary in the midst of numbers – sometimes this solitude oppresses me to an excess – one day lately I felt as if I could bear it no longer – and I went to Mde Heger and gave her notice – If it had depended on her I should certainly have soon been at liberty but Monsieur Heger – having heard of what was in agitation – sent for me the day after – and pronounced with vehemence his decision that I should not leave – I could not at that time have persevered in my intention without exciting him to passion – so I promised to stay a while longer – how long that while
will be I do not know – I should not like to return to England to do nothing – I am too old for that now – but if I could hear of a favourable occasion for commencing a school – I think I should embrace it.