Confession (6 page)

I gasped. What a creature! What a sight to behold on the wing. It had flown so close to my face that I swear its wings had brushed my cheek. An angel could not have made a deeper impression. The owl glided past me into shadows after which silence descended.

Suddenly I wanted to rush indoors and tell Emily. That was my first thought, to run across the garden in to the schoolroom to tell my sister what I had witnessed, but just as I was about to do so, something held me back.

Some things are too precious to share. Emily would no doubt intimate that she had had a hundred similar experiences – telling would unweave the spell.

In the dormitory later that night Emily asked what is was I was looking at.

I was standing by the window.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

VII

Adventurers sailing across unmapped seas must betimes have felt as lost and directionless as my sister and I as we grappled with the assignments Monsieur Heger asked us to complete before we attended his next lesson.

For a week we worked slavishly over our
devoirs
after which we handed them in to our Master who returned them in less than an hour.

Both scripts were covered in corrections.

My heart sank.

Not one sentence remained unmarked by black ink. There were corrections to my spelling – Monsieur Heger had forbidden us the use of a dictionary – there were corrections to my tenuous grasp of French tenses but more than that there were scores of sentences entirely obliterated from the page. The metaphors I had summoned up from deep within were criticized, words that I had selected with great care, adjectives, similes were scrubbed out like tin soldiers felled in battle, if I had wandered even slightly from the main subject I was brought immediately back to book.

He spoke to Emily first saying that she must improve her vocabulary and that her grammar also needed sharpening. ‘But you have obviously thought your subject through thoroughly. You have a head for logic which is rare in one so young,’ he added, a phrase I would have exchanged for all King Midas’s gold to hear in reference to my own work.

But Emily’s face remained blank. If she was pleased she would not allow a stranger to see it. It pained me. Emily had been studying French for far less a time than I, but I did not realise how much it pained me until Monsieur turned his attention to my essay –
Prière du Soir dans un camp
.

At first I thought he would berate me for choosing to ignore Chateaubriand’s Catholic sensibility, replacing it with my own – more measured - Protestant one.

This was not the case.

Monsieur Heger did not seem to care about my religious preferences, instead he concentrated on the pedestrian failings of my writing.

‘Your command of French vocabulary and idiom is better than that of your sister’s,’ he said, ‘ but it still needs strengthening – as does your grammar. You make too many careless mistakes. You also wander around your subject like a cow wandering aimlessly over the hilltops. You graze here and you graze there, you glance at a pasture below, then one above, loops and zigzags – ’

‘A cow – ’

Monsieur Heger let out a sound like a growl. A low, animal sound.

‘You growled!’ I said looking up at him in astonishment.

‘I am clearing my throat,’ he replied narrowing his eyes as he spoke then placing one hand on my essay he continued, ‘Mademoiselle, for the first half of your essay you describe the scene in camp– you use it as if it were the argument itself. Your setting is well described but it overwhelms everything else – ’

‘I – ’

‘Listen to me. You begin by describing the sunset but then the sun takes precedence over what it was intended to clarify. Tell me, did Chateaubriand write like that? Did he structure his argument as you have structured yours?’

‘My feelings – ’

‘No, he did not,’ Monsieur Heger said riding roughshod over my feeble attempt at a defence.
‘Here for instance,’ he pointed to a particular sentence – the image is good but the rendition is mediocre and clumsy. See how I have tidied it up? Made it more truthful to itself and to the essay as a whole?’

‘I thought it quite good,’ I replied crestfallen. ‘The way you have written it is rather too direct perhaps?’

Emily smiled. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, but Monsieur Heger did not smile.

‘Direct’ he said tapping his finger on the table impatiently.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

‘You speak of direct?’

Tap. Tap. Tap.

‘An essay must have integrity. For integrity the essay must be well constructed. The argument must be truthful to the whole piece. No disorder. No wandering off.’

‘The cow?’ I whispered.

‘Precisely, the cow!’

‘I only digressed for a second – ’

‘The truth is what we are pursuing Mademoiselle. The truth!’

‘But the truth explains nothing.’ I said standing my ground as best I could and raising my voice. ‘Indeed facts require explanation themselves. That’s why the Imagination needs to be heard –’

‘There is a place for the Imagination – but not for its own sake – humour me please?’

‘I – ’

‘Please.’

I nodded though my spirits sagged. Hadn’t I written in this fashion since I was a child,
delighted in my phrasing and imagery? Now, not only did I have to master a foreign language, I was being taught how to master a whole new way of approaching language itself. It seemed a defeat and yet here was a man willing to talk to me as an equal. A man who, were I to allow my Imagination free reign, I would compare to one of the gods from Greek mythology perhaps? Zeus or Titan? A strong, stern type, standing on top a mountain, a laurel wreath resting on his brow, a bolt of lightening gripped fiercely in his hand.

‘We shall start again,’ Monsieur Heger said leaning down closer. The smell of cigar smoke filled my nostrils. ‘Here for instance,’ he began, ‘I have deleted this phrase and see what I have done here? By replacing those four words with this one your whole argument is more tailored.’

I nodded.

‘It is clearer, is it not?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is clearer.’

‘Mademoiselle you must not misunderstand me. I do admire your imaginative powers but for them to be effective you must not sacrifice the structure of your argument on the altar of mere Fancy. Start with some control, let your mind display logic and follow this line through as you might a lifeline. The imagination will sing all the more clearly after that.’

My imaginative powers?
Even today, so many years later, I can remember Monsieur Heger’s words and the transformative effect they had upon me.

The whole room turned to gold.

Neither Emily nor myself had set eyes on Madame Heger for several days other than a brief encounter with her when she had entered the music room where Emily was practicing piano
one late afternoon. On that occasion Madame Heger appeared surprised that it was Emily and myself seated at the instrument rather than somebody other. Nevertheless she complimented Emily’s playing – declaring it ‘very good, quite charming’ before leaving us in peace, closing the door quietly behind her.

But on the day we left Monsieur Heger’s study after he had gone through our devoirs – and on several occasions afterwards – Emily insisted she saw Madam Heger hovering in the shadows at the far end of the corridor. The first time it occurred Emily said that Madame Heger looked right through her as if she, Emily, were a ghost – before disappearing silently around the corner.

‘She was spying on us,’ Emily said later as we walked arm in arm through the garden as the evening sun was beginning to set. Cherry blossom drifted through the air catching in our hair.

‘Perhaps she needed to speak to Monsieur?’ I replied more practically, ‘but did not want to disturb him.’

Emily would hear none of it.

‘Then why would she not enter the room when we were finished? She is so silent, have you noticed, when she moves she never makes a sound? You can’t hear her approaching – it’s unnatural.’

By this time we had reached the far end of the garden beyond the flowerbeds where the shrubbery became darker. In a few weeks time Spring would be in full force, the honeysuckle and buttercups would be in flower. We had been here a month already. Time was passing swiftly.

Emily pointed to a Yew tree flecked with red berries.

‘A bulk of mystery and gravitas,’ she said.

‘Seething in the breeze of spring,’ I quoted back.

‘Have you ever wanted to eat them? They look so pretty. Like little red cherries?’

‘They’re poisonous.’

‘Perhaps that is what makes them so appealing?’ her voice drifted off.

‘You’re happier today, aren’t you?’ I said.

‘I’ll only be happy when we can go home.’

‘But there are moments when you forget yourself – ’

Emily’s face grew sullen. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see? Being here isn’t living, it is existing. I know we are here for a purpose, but that does not mean I don’t feel ill every hour of every day – ’

‘When we are working I forget where I am. We could be anywhere in the world, it doesn’t seem to matter.’

‘I can’t be you,’ Emily replied sternly. She rested her head on my shoulder. ‘We could shorten our stay could we not? Return home early?’

No! – a voice screamed deep from within. I cared for my sister, oh how I cared! But I cared for my studies too.

‘We should try to mix in more,’ I said brightly.

Emily snorted. ‘They don’t want to be our friends. They make fun us, you know they do.’

‘Monsieur does not make fun us – ’

‘He is tyrannical, look how he is making us study the language, copying others –’

‘He has taken great pains over our studies – ’

‘Great pains? We are good students, we are
exceptional
students. The others are dolts in comparison to us.’ At this point Emily pulled a face, expressing just how stupid she thought
our fellow pupils to be. ‘I hate living here. I want to go home. I shall not change my mind.’

No, I thought, there is no changing how you feel, you are as tyrannical as he is, perhaps even more so.

Above us the bells of Ste. Gudule rang out the hour.

‘I am going in now,’ Emily said turning back towards the house but it was not more than a few seconds later before she let out a small cry.

Madame Heger had appeared as if out of nowhere.

It was amusing and I have to confess I almost allowed myself to laugh out loud.

‘Madame?’ I stuttered desperately trying to stifle my giggles.

‘Mesdemoiselles,’ replied our directrice softy then she tilted her head a little to one side whilst allowing the slightest of frowns to pass across her brow as if she had come upon something untoward. ‘What are you doing in the garden at this time of day? One of the girls said she thought someone was prowling. You will catch your death of cold. Look, you are shivering,’ she said to me as if she had just discovered evidence of some terrible crime. Her preposterousness made me want to laugh even more and I could feel my body beginning to shake.

‘Madame – ’ I began once again but Emily, seeing my lack of composure, rescued the situation by explaining quietly how we liked being outside in the evenings, how for us this was not cold weather but mild.

Madame would hear none of it and kept up her fuss. ‘I do not want you falling ill,’ she remonstrated kindly enough. ‘What would your family say? Besides it is not what we do here – walk around by ourselves at nightfall. Come, it is almost time for the evening meal, you must be hungry and we don’t want you to miss hearing the bell. Come, come – ’

‘But…’

But Madame held up her hand.

‘Come,’ she said again only this time on hearing her speak something inside me snapped. Instead of finding her voice amusing or caring, it grated.

We were being to spoken to as if we were children. Besides – there was something else in her voice, some hidden accusation that we could not be trusted to walk alone in her garden.

Emily tugged at my sleeve but I did not move.

I was still listening to Madame’s voice, filled with supposed concern, yet hollow as a blown egg.

That night as we mounted the stairs to the dormitory I found myself pausing in front of the Virgin Mary. Surrounded by candles her image flickered thinly against the whitewashed walls. I looked at her smooth plaster face and as I did so became conscious for the first time that as much as I was looking at her, so she was looking at me, her eyes steadily drinking me in.

VIII

‘You have five minutes,’ said Mademoiselle Blanche as she paced up and down the schoolroom inbetween our desks pausing only when she reached that of Vertue Basompierre who stared up at her in incomprehension.

‘I cannot possibly finish in that time! You forget I came late to the lesson – ’

‘How could I possibly forget? – ’ replied our instructress disdainfully. ‘Your entrance disrupted us all – ’

If Vertue blushed I did not see it. Instead she took to retying one of the many silk ribbons adorning her hair – an action that provoked Mademoiselle Blanche for suddenly her mouth turned thin and hard. In comparison to her young pupil the elder woman seemed extremely ugly – an impression that was far from the truth as Mademoiselle Blanche was a striking woman in her own right. I had noted as much on the first evening we set eyes on her in the Refectory – how finely her features were drawn, how green her eyes appeared. Her waist was thin as a wasp’s, her hair dark as ravens’ wings. If Vertue Basompierre made the sun dull, Mademoiselle Blanche eclipsed the moon. She certainly outshone all of the other staff put together. And she knew it.

She drew close to mine & Emily’s desks – she was wearing a jet black silk dress, the surface of which was slippery as oil on water.

‘Your handwriting,’ she drawled while glancing down at my sister’s worksheet, ‘where did you learn to write like that?’

Emily shrugged, although whether out of ignorance or mulishness, I do not know.

‘Our father instructed us,’ I said picking up my sister’s slack. ‘He taught us how to read and write – ’

‘It shows,’ replied our teacher curtly.