Miss Appleby's Academy (13 page)

As she stood there snow began to fall again. It was typical somehow, she thought: it was meant to be spring, but here in the middle of freezing nowhere no leaf seemed to be stirring, no shoots from the ground. She felt as if she were a small child again, putting out her tongue to catch a flake of snow upon it, and somebody was laughing behind her and encouraging her, and she knew that it was her mother. She had not felt as close since her mother died.

George searched further, but Emma found the Applebys, in the far corner of the graveyard, where most older people appeared to be buried: her other grandparents, their gravestones very plain, almost hidden in shadow, nothing but names and dates, Mary and James. After that she felt at home: all four of her grandparents lay here.

The day grew worse. Emma and George walked back to the Black Diamond and into the kitchen. Emma had decided that she would be bolder. Here she found vegetables in various stages of decay and these she peeled and diced and put onto the stove with water and some salt and when the soup was almost ready she saw the bartender standing in the doorway.

‘We thought you’d gone,’ he said.

Emma didn’t answer. She found bowls and plates and spoons and knives and she knew how good the soup smelled and that he was a man who would object to nothing if he could fill his belly. He produced a loaf of
bread and some butter and all three of them, without a word, sat down to eat.

Ed ate rapidly. Emma got up and poured more soup into his bowl. He looked at her with grateful eyes.

‘I don’t know your full name,’ she said. ‘I’m Miss Emma Appleby.’

‘Edward Higgins. I’m from Yorkshire.’

‘Do you have family, Mr Higgins?’

‘Nay,’ he said, and something about his tone stopped Emma from asking more.

She gave him a third bowlful and George a second, and there was even some left for her to have seconds. She was quite proud of the soup, though it was nothing but vegetables, water and a little butter added at the end.

He went back to the bar, thanking her awkwardly and saying, ‘You cannot stay here. Mr Castle is due in soon and he won’t stand for anything.’

Emma told George not to go anywhere near the bars or the men. She said he could go outside or up to the room where they had slept.

She began to clean the kitchen. She was not used to grime and she could not sit there and endure it. Under the sink she found cloths, a scrubbing brush, washing soda and a big bar of hard yellow soap. She heated up some water and even found a bucket so that she could wash the floor. She was pleased with the result.

She scrubbed the surfaces, even on top of the cupboards; she threw out all the food which had gone off, and there was a lot of it; she turned out the cupboards and scrubbed
those too. She threw out the awful rugs which covered the floor and were heavy with dirt. She took the brush and soapy water to the walls, and she had almost finished the floor when she heard a sound and saw the boots and looked up at the owner. She thought he might have seemed less emaciated or more friendly in the daylight, but if anything he looked worse, white-faced as though he never slept, eyes narrowed against the daylight. He had a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers and looked around in wonderment.

‘What in the hell are you doing still here?’ he said. ‘This isn’t a bloody orphanage, you know.’

Emma got up, her dress was dragging because it was wet, her forehead was sweaty and her hands were sore. He was glaring at her.

‘I told you last night to leave,’ he said.

His voice had gone very soft. Emma didn’t trust that. She knew more about men than she knew about women because she had lived with her father for so long and with Laurence and she did not mistake the dangerous note behind the softness.

At this point her hair, which was also damp, had come loose and rather a lot of it was in her eyes. She pushed it away with a wet sleeve. ‘We have nowhere to go. I know that can’t mean anything to you but – I could work if you would let us have the room upstairs. You’re not using it and – and it would mean a lot.’

He looked baffled.

‘We – we travelled to Boston and took ship to Liverpool
and then trains and then – we got here and then the money ran out.’

‘You came all the way from America to this?’

Emma almost laughed. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘isn’t it ridiculous?’ and then her voice broke. ‘There’s nobody left. I thought I had people here. I don’t know why. My mother was an only child and so was my father and they’re all dead. There’s nobody left for me.’ She rubbed her hands on her skirt which was sopping wet.

He looked at her quizzically. Then he glanced around the kitchen, not as if he saw it, but as if he saw it differently.

‘Do you want a barmaid?’ she asked.

Now he looked disparagingly at her. ‘Even if I did I don’t think you’d make much of one at your age and I don’t want a cleaner either, so leave that lot alone.’

‘The place is filthy,’ Emma objected. ‘I’ve never seen anything as bad this.’

‘It’s not your concern. Take your bastard and go.’

‘He’s not my bastard!’ Emma said and then she heard herself shouting and at a man who suddenly seemed so big and so bad-tempered.

She burst into such tears that she couldn’t see. Her dress was by now stuck to her very thin form, her hair had gone into what her mother used to call ‘rats’ tails’ and worst of all somehow she managed to knock over the pail of dirty water which she had just used to scrub the floor. The lukewarm water went everywhere, all over the floor, all over her feet and all over his feet, though to her
surprise he didn’t move, as if things like wet feet were irrelevant.

‘Why does everybody think such a horrible thing?’ she demanded.

‘Where’s your husband?’

‘I haven’t got one.’

‘Women round here that have bairns have husbands unless they’re whores,’ he said and walked out.

Emma slopped down the passage after him and even into the room which was his office. She had never done such a thing before, she couldn’t think why she was doing it now, but she felt such rage that she could not hold it in as she was used to doing.

‘Don’t you say things like that to me! I’m tired of hearing such dreadful things. My father and I took that boy in after I found him in the snow. I’m taking care of him.’

He looked surprised and not pleased. ‘Well, it doesn’t look to me as though you’re making much of a job of it, bringing him all this way for nowt.’

‘It wasn’t for – for nowt!’

‘Then what the hell was it for? What are you running from?’

‘My brother arranged a marriage for me, with an old man.’

He stared. ‘They have arranged marriages in America?’

‘Not like that!’

The room resounded to their voices, and she could hear her own lifted in argument and she wasn’t afraid. She realized then that after the way Laurence had treated her
she had stopped being afraid of men, no matter what their power.

‘It must have been pretty bad to make you run away like a spoilt bairn.’

‘He wanted rid of me. So here I am. You don’t use those rooms upstairs for anything. What difference does it make to you whether we’re up there?’

He looked at her. ‘You slept up there?’

‘It was better than outside, though not much. The whole place is disgusting. What did you expect me to do, disappear into the snow in the middle of this stupid little town?’

There was a long silence. Emma sniffed again, really this crying thing was terribly messy, but she felt much better. She pushed back her wet hair. ‘And I made soup and Mr Higgins said it was very nice.’

‘Did he now?’

‘Yes, he did.’

She waited and she thought he was going to ignore her, to sit down and begin on his work – there were a lot of papers – but he didn’t. He eyed her. ‘All right,’ he said evenly, ‘you can have a room upstairs and you can have the kitchen, but I don’t want you anywhere else and I don’t want that bairn in the bars or in anybody’s road. Do you understand me? You can have a week. And stay out of the shops and such, they don’t like strangers, especially not women with bairns on their own.’

‘He’s called George and he’s twelve.’

‘You will find somewhere else before the end of the week.’

She nodded wordlessly, and then she marched out of the office and back into the kitchen. She washed the kitchen floor again and then she went upstairs and found dry clothes. Nobody said anything; nobody put her out. The night came down, not as rapidly as it did at home, but softly like a thief just after four, and she liked the way that it hesitated and came down like a blanket. The noise from the bars did not really intrude, but she closed the doors and she and George sat down beside the kitchen fire.

She heard shouting and other noises – a clattering, and then the sound of breaking glass. Emma opened the door and ventured into the darkness of the hall and a rare sight met her eyes. Men were fighting both in and out of the pub – she had never seen anything like it. She had read of hand-to-hand combat without weapons, but she had not thought it was so noisy. Men screamed and shouted one another’s names and cursed, and it was not anything scientific like boxing, she imagined, where there were certain rules.

Bloody fists punched heads and stomachs, one man picked up a chair and broke it over another’s head, but instead of going down on the floor the man merely stood for a few seconds and then turned to take vengeance and they grasped one another and grappled and went heavily against the wall. Another man held his opponent down on the floor with a chair leg while smashing him in the face with an almost square fist. Chairs and tables overturned, and glasses smashed, raining like diamonds against the lamplight.

Mr Castle and Mr Higgins were fighting at either end
of the room and one of the windows had been broken. Emma thought somebody might have gone through it and been badly injured, but it looked as though somebody had fired rocks at it from outside as they were visible on the floor and the glass was lying everywhere in shards.

It did not stop the men from rolling in it as they pushed and pulled and punched. One big square man got hold of a whisky bottle from behind the bar, smashed it on the bar top and tried to push it into Mr Higgins’ face. Emma screamed and pointed, and Mr Castle heard her, reached him and knocked him over before he got any closer. Another man ran right in front of her with a knife in his hand and she put out one leg and he fell over it. He went down hard and fast.

Emma was amazed at herself. This place was nothing to her, neither were these men. Why then did she already feel as though she belonged here? If anybody had told her that she would be fearless in such circumstances she would have thought they were mad. Somehow it was basic stuff, like which side you were on, and she was on the right side and the winning side, she could see, as various men were thrown from the door and Mr Castle and Mr Higgins and one or two others stood triumphant in the middle of the floor. She was pleased. She wanted to cheer. How odd. How barbaric.

Then it started up again, but she could see that the worst was over and that the intruders were half-hearted now, some of them punch-drunk, none of them able to do any real damage, either to the men or to the place. She went back into the kitchen and shut the door and
leaned against it as though she thought they might get that far. It went on for a long time and she could hear Mr Castle’s brutally vile voice.

She didn’t exactly know what he was saying, which was just as well, and then she heard his voice raised in thanks to various men and the outside doors slam. After that it was quiet. She wanted to hover in the kitchen, called herself a coward and went out into the hall and through into the bar.

The place was a mess such as she had never seen. She could not help staring at the broken glass which was like a raised carpet on the floor there was that much of it. There was blood, little pools and trickles. Not a single table or chair was upright and many of the chairs were broken. The floor was strewn with broken glass and swimming in beer. Mr Higgins pulled a chair upright and sat down.

Emma went to him. ‘Are you hurt?’

He grinned in admiration. ‘Nay, lass, I’m fine, thanks to you.’

Mr Castle stared at her and then said, with a touch of humour, ‘Help with many fights, do you?’

‘Well, he, well, I—’ Emma felt embarrassed at her part in the conflict.

Mr Higgins sighed. ‘I’m getting too bloody old for this, Mick.’ He screwed his eyes up at his employer, winced and brought bloody knuckles across his cheekbone.

Realizing that neither man was badly hurt Emma went back to the kitchen and brought a big brush and shovel
and bucket and she began shovelling the glass into the pail. Sweeping up glass covered in beer was a very difficult thing to do, but they all helped. George came through and put the chairs upright, and he and Mr Higgins took the broken bits outside because they could burn them next time they had a bonfire, Mr Higgins said.

When all the glass was gone – and Emma was careful because she thought of the black dog and she didn’t want him to get any glass in the pads of his paws (she still kept finding tiny little particles in among the beer) – eventually Mr Castle came to her and he said, ‘You’ve washed too many floors today. Go to bed.’

She tried to protest, but he shook his head.

‘In the morning it’ll be dry and any glass that’s left you can sweep up then if you’ve a mind.’

She could not help saying to him, ‘You won’t let the dog in here.’

It made him smile. ‘He’s safe in my office and no, I won’t let him through. Go to bed and take George with you. He’s dropping.’

She hadn’t noticed that George’s face had become paler and paler, but he was still there, chatting brightly to Mr Higgins as though he cleaned up after fights every day. She went over and collected him and they went wearily up the stairs.

She was so exhausted that she didn’t care about the grubby sheets, the dark room and the curtains on the floor. She covered George and herself with blankets and they slept.

It was very late when Mick got home after the fight. He was always late home, it was always the darkest middle of the night, it was always silent. He liked the silence, the getting away from the constant sound of the men’s voices. Not that he minded – they paid the wages, they provided the money – but the silence that greeted him in his house was like velvet to his ears. He went to sleep to the sound of it, but not yet, not before he checked that Isabel was safe, that Connie was safe, that he had done what he could and was content to leave it until another day.