Miss Appleby's Academy (17 page)

Later, tired out, she and George went back to the Black Diamond to eat and sleep. Mr Higgins had already been told that she was moving out. He said he would be sorry to see her go, he would miss her, and she said that he would miss her cooking and he laughed and said that was true too. She also said that he must come to the schoolhouse and he could eat with them there, it was not far, and he looked much brighter at that and said was she sure she wouldn’t mind.

He told her she could take the chickens which he had always considered a dreadful nuisance and he would build her a run and make sure they couldn’t get into the rest of the garden and wreck it.

*

The following morning she took their clothes and a few books and other bits and pieces and moved into the school-house proper. She ventured out to the shops and there boldly put on Mr Castle’s account tea, coffee, sugar, flour, yeast, butter, lard and such vegetables as could be had, and she had already decided to grow her own vegetables when she got the garden going and maybe even fruit if the climate would stand it in the spring. Here and at the other shops people looked queerly at her, but she remained brisk and decisive and ignored them.

Mr Castle arrived mid morning and she was able to offer him coffee.

‘Do you think I could grow fruit here?’ she asked.

‘You would need a greenhouse and even that might not stand.’

‘A glasshouse?’

‘Yes, but in a sheltered spot. The best place would be beside the wall down there.’

He pointed. They were in the kitchen at the time and she thought his knowledge showed that there had been such things before, or perhaps at one time he had made plans for what there might be in the future. The future, she thought, was a very shy child which could grow into a snarling monster. Had it been that way for him?

‘I would like apple and pear trees, espaliered against the wall, and currants, and could I not grow plenty of vegetables?’ she said.

‘I suppose you could. Jack could come and help, he’s a good lad. He could turn over the soil and dig, you couldn’t do all that yourself, especially if the scholars were boarding. The soil’s heavy here, but the frosts are keen and break it up. It’s good for potatoes and turnips, and you can keep brussels sprouts and cabbages in all winter, and sometimes even the roses bloom at Christmas.’

He had a faraway look in his eyes as he said this, and Emma realized he was not just talking about what she could do now.

‘You need a dog.’

He spoke carelessly, but in the evening when he brought the dog she saw that it was the dog she knew and she saw how he got down to the animal and cradled its ears with his hands and spoke softly and very close to the dog’s face, and she saw how the dog watched him and she saw later how the dog watched him leave as though he would never see Mr Castle again. Did dogs regret people? She felt sure they did, and she got down as Mr Castle had and she said, ‘Hector, he’ll be back and you’ll be here and though you might miss him I need you now to look after George and me. Will you come into the other room? There’s a good fire.’ When Hector followed her in and settled down by the fire George got down beside him on the newly bought rug (from the same place as the bed linen came from – she had gone back for so many things
she needed) and went to sleep on the dog’s stomach, and Hector did not move as though he knew that George was just a child.

When it was late she roused George and took him to bed. The dog was waiting by the door and though she let him out he would not go until she went with him, as though he without her and she without him was no good, so she followed him into the garden and the sky was lit with stars so very bright. When he had done what she thought he had to do he came and sat by her to show her that he was ready to go inside, and they went back in together. Hector waited at the bottom of the stairs, and when Emma had locked the door and felt safe she said to him, ‘Hector, would you like to come and sleep in the bedroom? I would feel so much safer if you were there.’ He followed her up the stairs, and when she climbed into bed he lay down with a great sigh on the rug (which she had bought of course when she had bought the one downstairs) and went to sleep. He snored. She liked his soft, snuffly snoring. It was so reassuring.

George, having gone around all the bedrooms, kept changing his mind about which he wanted and in the end he just looked at her and said, ‘I’m not sure. Could I sleep with you just until I get used to things?’ and she said that yes, he could of course if he chose, and it was such a comfort to have the child and the dog there, and even the wind moaning outside as it made its way from the heather down the valley to the dale and beyond made her feel good. She was growing used to it. She even liked the great silence of the house.

It groaned as old houses sometimes do and she was not afraid. Houses have their own sounds and their own ways and in a coalfield sometimes there are abandoned pits beneath them and the fields beyond the houses go up and down in ridges and that is how you know that there was, or is, a pit nearby. It might alarm some people, but when you are born and bred in such a place you don’t really mind, and Emma felt like that then, that she was born to live here.

The ridges are like the waves on the sea where some think we all came from, and that is familiar. The waves in the sea and the waves in the fields can lull you to sleep and that was what happened to Emma on that first night. She had thought she would be so afraid, but she was not.

*

The following day Emma had a visitor. She heard a banging on the door. It was late afternoon, the sky had been deep grey for hours and she was reluctant to open the door because it was growing dark. She thought she could not stop answering the door at that time, but she hesitated when she did so because she recognized the man who stood on her doorstep.

He didn’t give her a chance to say anything, but launched into something which she felt sure he had rehearsed and said it so quickly that she understood he was afraid of her reaction even though they had not met properly.

‘Miss Appleby? I am Norton English, the master at the
school. I would like to speak to you if it is at all convenient. I understand from the talk in the place that you are attempting to start a school. You cannot set up a school here. We have no need of another, we have two already. There is no cause for you to do this, I doubt you have any qualifications and I cannot see why you would do such a thing when there are no pupils.’

If this had been said in any sort of a convincing manner Emma would have shut the door on him, but by the end of his speech the sweat stood out on his pale forehead, his thinning hair plastered to his head, which was shiny with moisture. He had no coat. He was ill-shod and his shirt cuffs were so frayed they were almost two pieces of material. His hands shook.

‘I remember you, Mr English. Do come in.’

Evidently he had not expected any degree of hospitality. He stood on her step as though rooted.

‘You have a child. I saw you come into my school. I would be willing to have the boy even though he appears to have no father.’

‘Mr English, I wouldn’t send Hector to you and he’s a Labrador,’ she said. ‘Come in, do.’

Mr English, thus summoned, meekly followed her into the kitchen.

She gave him tea and apple pie, sat down across the table from him, watched him looking at the enormous piece of pie like a starved schoolboy who wasn’t sure he should, before attacking it with appetite, and then she said, ‘I’m not trying to steal your pupils, but it seems to
me that schoolmastering is not your true calling.’

Mr English looked long at her. He was finishing up the apple pie.

‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘it was all the work I could find.’

‘You do not like it?’

‘My wife is very ill.’

Emma enquired as to the nature of Mrs English’s malady and discovered that she was in constant pain from arthritis in her feet and hands which was crippling her.

‘She cannot hold a knife or a fork,’ he said, ‘and she finds walking difficult. We live on her parents’ smallholding a mile away.’ He smiled briefly. ‘She was going to run the farm and the sheep – she knows so much about these things – and I was going to teach and we were going to have children. None of it seems to have worked out and the teaching is all we have.’

Emma absently cut him another piece of apple pie even though he protested, and she poured more tea and said, ‘Could you not sell the place and move into the village?’

‘It isn’t ours to sell. Like her parents were, we are only the tenants. I need my job, you see, and when I heard that Mr Castle was paying for this new school I knew that he would take his child away from me. He has problems at home, you know, his wife drinks, it’s become common knowledge, and though I don’t like to say so, I feel certain that it is affecting their child.’

Emma called Jack, who was working in the yard, and asked him to keep an eye on things while she went off to
see Mrs English; then she loaded up a basket with food, and hoping she didn’t seem like a condescending busybody she followed Mr English’s lead down a dirt track.

It felt more to her like three miles though it must have been nothing of the kind. The fell was one of those places which was lovely to look at, but not much fun to be on. The road was narrow and stony and full of potholes and wove its way amidst stunted bushes and grass. It ran for miles on either side and she could see nothing beyond stone walls and the odd tree, and the wind cut into her ankles even though the sun shone.

When she got there she was appalled at the state of the buildings. Even the small stone house, though picturesque she was sure in the daytime, was falling down and the outbuildings had no roofs. There were broken stone walls everywhere and the grass was long right around the buildings. You could not have grown anything there, it could have nourished nothing but sheep, the land was so rough.

They went inside and it was no different. If there had been a light of any kind Emma would have been able to see her breath, she thought. Mr English explained that he would have been home by now, Mrs English could not see to the fire or make a light and there was nothing more than a dull glow in the grate.

‘Is that you, dear?’ Mrs English said, as though it might have been somebody else.

‘I’ve brought you a visitor,’ he said.

He lit the lamp which cast nothing more than lighter shadows and a tiny woman was to be seen on a couch in
the corner of the room, swathed in shawls. Emma made her decision instantly. She said who she was, and added, ‘Mr English has allowed me to invite you to stay with me for a day or two.’ She did not look at Norton English’s face at this point. ‘We’ve come to take you up to the academy.’

Mrs English stared. ‘What is the academy?’

‘It’s the new school. When we have more pupils Mr English is going to help me there.’

He didn’t answer. It was bad enough, Emma thought, that he was obliged to carry his wife most of the way back, but he seemed willing enough and it was no surprise, Emma thought as she swept the two people out of the house and away down the track towards the lights of the village.

*

‘What in the name of God are those people doing here?’ was Mick Castle’s question when he came to collect Connie and found Mr and Mrs English gracing the kitchen fire.

Emma bustled him into the little room she had made her study at the back of the house. It looked over the yard to the side, but when she worked there she could also see the gates and anyone who should enter, though the noise Hector started up would have alerted anybody to visitors.

‘It’s just for a visit,’ she explained as she closed the door. ‘Have you seen where they live?’

‘He has a perfectly good job and—’

‘He has nothing of the sort.’ Emma surprised herself with her vehemence, but she cared. She could hear her
voice shaking. He was not reassuring. He was big in the room. Emma had forgotten how large men were, just by their very beings, and he was scruffy and ill-shaven and carried with him the odour of the bar, cigarettes and beer, which while it might have been attractive to some made her want to wrinkle her nose and complain.

‘The schoolroom is an appalling place. Who could learn anything there? The children are disruptive and Mr English cannot control them.’

‘That’s his problem.’

Emma stared at him, held his gaze. ‘Is it really? Is this the kind of education you want for the children here? It won’t do!’

He returned the gaze, his face cool and sarcastic. ‘I see, and do you think you would like to have forty children here?’

‘Why not? The place is big enough’

‘You’re overreaching yourself.

‘Nothing of the sort. Do you think any of those children wanted to be there? They were sullen and badly dressed—’

‘The people here are poor.’

‘They’re poor because other people keep them poor and if they had education they would not be poor for long. They could then do the things God intended them for, not live out their lives in this godforsaken hole while rich people leave them in grinding poverty.’

Emma had never made such a speech before. She didn’t know whether to be proud of herself or not. She could
hear her voice, loud and booming in the air.

‘I cannot afford to keep the village,’ he said.

‘You can afford to keep your wife in spirits all day,’ Emma said, and then was horrified.

He stood for several seconds, and Emma thought of the people being thrown out of the pub and wondered what it felt like, and then he turned and would have left the room. Somebody who was nothing to do with her whisked round and stood against the door. She tried to hold his gaze.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was unforgivable of me.’

He looked down at the unprepossessing hat in his hands which must have been years old, it was falling to pieces. ‘No,’ he said, softly, ‘you’re quite right of course.’

She faltered, and then she said, ‘Mick—’ for the first time, and then her voice gave out and her resolution and she stood away from the door and he opened it with a kind of jerk and left the room.

When she went into the kitchen both he and Connie had gone. She pretended that nothing mattered, she gave Mr and Mrs English the stew she had made for dinner, but later, when his wife had been shown to a clean bed in one of the downstairs rooms which Emma had designated a bedroom, hastily made ready, she and Mr English sat at the kitchen table and he said to her, teacup in hand, ‘I could not help seeing Mr Castle’s reaction and I don’t blame him. We have no right here. We must go in the morning.’