Miss Appleby's Academy (23 page)

‘And you?’ She drew back and traced the beard and his face. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Would you like something to eat?’ he said.

‘Is there anything?’

They got out of bed. She stood for a few seconds and then collapsed. The girl who looked after Isabel – he could not even remember her name – was back in the house by then. He sent her for the doctor.

*

Sam looked across the bed at him. Isabel had fallen into an uneasy sleep.

‘She should be in hospital.’

‘Can’t I look after her here?’

Sam stood for a moment and then he said, ‘Get rid of the drink, if there’s any left. Don’t let her out. Give her water and stuff that’s easy on her stomach. You must stay with her. If she has another drink it could kill her.’

‘I won’t go anywhere.’

‘And get somebody to sort this place out,’ Sam said roughly.

*

Mick didn’t come back. Emma hadn’t expected him to and there was relief in her as well as a stupid disappointment, and she was even able to blame him for not coming back to her. She tried to concentrate on teaching the children. Jack had spent all morning trying to get
rid of the paint on the defaced sign, but in the end he had taken it down and that was how she felt. As though everything were finished. The afternoon and early evening crawled by. She thought that he might wait until the children were in bed and she hurried them there. They looked at her strangely, but once they were in bed there was nothing to do. She couldn’t concentrate to read. Perhaps he thought she was cheap, maybe he had a problem at work, or maybe Jack had told him about the sign.

In the end she went to bed and cried. Hector, allowed back in the bedroom as though nothing had happened, slept on the rug by her bed. She began to think that it had not happened at all, that she had been so desperate that she had imagined the whole thing. How shameful, how cowardly, how base.

She didn’t sleep. She turned over a hundred times and then went downstairs into the black of night, tried to bring the stove back to life, and after she had done so she waited a long time for the kettle to boil. She was still sitting there, the tea she had made gone cold, when the day arrived and all she thought about was what the previous dawn had been like, how happy she had been, and how she had felt so empty when he had gone.

*

Mick did not leave the house for a week. Jack took a note to Emma – only to say that he had been detained and would she go on looking after Connie, he would be in touch. He sent other notes to the Black Diamond and to
the managers of the small pubs he owned nearby. People would just have to manage without him.

Jack also took messages to the women who used to clean the pubs and the house, to ask if they were paid more whether they would come back. Two of them must have had no other work because having been dismissed with pay but without a word they came back to the house. They said nothing, they brought with them cleaning equipment and soon, beyond the bedroom, Mick could smell polish, hear general noise. The windows were opened to the day and Mrs Dexter, a widow with two grown-up children, bustled in despite being asked not to come into the room and brought tea on a tray for Mick and Isabel.

‘I could come in here and clean next if you can move Mrs Castle to the back bedroom. It’s all fresh in there. I’ve put clean sheets on the bed, there were plenty of them when I looked, and I’ll get the bath hot and she can get out of those clothes.’

‘Mrs Dexter—’

‘Now, Mr Castle, don’t you worry. I won’t be telling tales abroad. I nursed my Bill for months before he died and I know all about sickness. You should have sent for me sooner. I don’t know why you didn’t,’ and off she went.

Isabel sat up and sipped at her tea, but she looked helplessly at him. ‘I need a drink.’

‘You can’t have one.’

‘Mick, I have to.’

‘Drink your tea.’

She threw it at him. Luckily he had been expecting
something of the sort and avoided it and since Mrs Dexter had not yet changed the bed he didn’t worry about the mess.

When the bath was ready he carried Isabel in there, discarded the dress which she had worn for so many weeks that it could almost have stood up by itself and soaped her emaciated body. Every rib showed. She cried. He washed her hair and took her out and towelled her dry and put her back into a clean bed, not the one she had got out of. He could hear Mrs Dexter clattering about in there and singing ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, slightly off key.

Isabel wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t drink anything, she turned away from him and then back to him and she tried to get free, tried to get out of the room, she did everything she could think of to find herself some spirits, but he didn’t leave her, didn’t let her, and she cursed and shouted and he wondered why he had not tried to do this sooner or would it have been impossible, the way that she was? What had changed? He could not work it out.

‘I hate you,’ she shouted. ‘Why are you doing this to me? Give me the bottle. I know you have it.’ She ran at him, kicked him, thumped him, tried to hit him anywhere she could, but he didn’t give in.

Then, just as he thought she was getting better she came to him, smiling and saying very softly, ‘I only need one drink, just one. I will give you anything you want.’

She cried and pleaded and then she pulled off her clothes and offered herself to him for just the one drink, just one. She wouldn’t eat. She threw everything back at him. In
the end he didn’t let Mrs Dexter into the room, he took food from her and cups of tea. He lost count of the tea Isabel threw at him. There was tea on the bedclothes and on him and on her. There was food on the bed and on the floor. When he wanted to open the curtains she wouldn’t let him, so he had no idea what time of day or night it was. He urged Mrs Dexter to go home, but she didn’t.

‘I’ve got nothing to go home for, Mr Castle, my bairns are grown and left and I think you could do with somebody here.’

This was undeniable. He wanted to say something, to apologize, to offer her money, but he didn’t. She knew all those things. When Isabel slept sometimes Mrs Dexter came in and watched her and he would go off to his room and doze. It was never for long, he couldn’t rest, he knew that Isabel needed him.

He tried not to think about her with Henry Atkinson and most of all he tried not to think of himself with Emma. He got on with what he was attempting to do. He kept on offering water to her parched mouth and eventually from sheer thirst she took it. She wouldn’t have anything else, but at night she began to breathe and sleep easily and on the fourth day she managed to get some buttered toast down.

She gazed at it as she ate it, as though she had never seen it before. He wanted to ask her why she had done what she had done, but he couldn’t; he must make do with what was happening now and try to keep going.

Day after day she demanded gin. She threw water at
him, she threw the pillows at him. When she slept he stood by the window exhausted, but ventured down into the kitchen. The house was transformed. Mrs Dexter was scrubbing the floor, the windows gleamed, the surfaces were spotless, and on the stove something smelled very good.

‘How is Mrs Castle feeling?’ she said with a slight smile.

‘A little better, I think.’

She crossed herself.

‘The things that are sent to try us,’ she said. Then she sat back on her heels and surveyed him. ‘What about a bath for you and a razor and some clean clothes?’

He didn’t say anything, he hadn’t thought about himself like that, he had been concentrating on Isabel for so long, but he nodded. He went back upstairs. The other woman, Mrs Hobson, was hanging out clothes in a stiff breeze so it was probably Monday morning and when he went to the other window the garden was such a mess in the cold day, there wasn’t a flower in sight anywhere. It made him want to cry.

He bathed and shaved and changed his clothes and stared at himself in the mirror at how different he looked, and then Isabel appeared in the mirror and he turned round quickly, fearing that she was angry or had found a bottle, but she just smiled at him sadly and said, ‘I’m hungry.’

It was ten days before he went to see Emma, and that was ostensibly to see Connie. Not surprisingly the first thing Connie said was, ‘When can I come home?’

He was able to reply, ‘If Miss Appleby has no objection you can come home in the morning.’

It was late, he had meant to come sooner but he couldn’t get away from Isabel, and Ed had come by with the problems from the Black Diamond and other managers had done the same because he had not been near the other pubs and there were things they could not manage on their own. He didn’t want to take Connie back home now. Isabel was never at her best at this time of day: having come through several hours without a drink she was exhausted.

Connie was pleased and went to bed early the better to pack her things and wait for the morning.

The children in bed and asleep, left alone with Emma, all Mick could say was, ‘I’m sorry. Isabel needed me.’

And the sensible woman he had fallen in love with looked at him with glittering green eyes and crimson cheeks.

‘She needed you? Oh well, that’s very good then, isn’t it? I hardly recognized you when you turned up here. You look almost like a gentleman. You’re not the man I
remember. You’re not the man I took to my bed.’

He glanced at the door of her study, but it was firmly closed and in fact her voice was lower than normal and that worried him, Emma usually shouted when she was angry.

‘She couldn’t manage without me.’

‘I hate that. I hate how I manage. I hate these women who can’t do without men. I hate them and I hate you. Go away.’

‘Emma—’

‘Just go. I wish I’d had more sense than to let you touch me. I wish I had never had anything to do with you other than business.’

He tried to put his arms around her, but she backed away.

‘Do you know what someone wrote upon the sign? Whore! That’s what I am, I’m your whore. At least I was, but it will never happen again. Jack took the sign down for me and he’s always here, thank God, to see to things. I’ll get him to take Connie home in the morning. Don’t come back here.’ She would have left the room, it was such a good exit line, and she tried to sweep out and then he pulled at her arm and the door didn’t open because he put a hand down on it.

‘It isn’t like that,’ he said softly. ‘My wife is mentally ill. What do you want me to do, put her in an institution? Do you think I want to be there? Do you think I haven’t thought about you every day and every night? Do you think it’s easy for me?’

‘I think you’re younger than me and handsomer than me and that I’m, I’m—’

He pulled her to him and then he kissed her and it was balm to him. He felt as though now he could go back into the private place in his head where he loved and was loved. It was short-lived. She wrenched herself away.

‘I’m not going to do this again. You have no right to come here and expect it. You’re married. Very married so that don’t have room in your life for anyone else, you barely have room for your child—’

‘I love her.’

‘Words are all very well, Mick, but you left your child here for ten days while you saw to your – your wife’s needs. She’s what you really care about.’

He stared at her. ‘What can I do?’

‘You can come here and act decently and not treat me like your whore.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘You may come and collect Connie in the morning if you choose. You have no right to anything more here. You may keep me at present, something which I hope to change with paying pupils, but I am not available to you.’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘Good. Then we know exactly where we are. Now go back to your wife.’

She went out of the study, giving him no option but to leave.

*

This time was better, Emma thought. She congratulated herself that she had put him from her, that she had successfully left him and that he had gone. She heard him leave, she didn’t see him, she went upstairs and he would not follow her there. She didn’t even cry she had such good control of herself. Then she shook and shook, and called herself names for having gone anywhere near a man in the first place. They were all alike, they were all like her father or they were like Laurence or they were like Mick Castle, expecting everything while giving nothing.

She went to bed and fell thankfully into sleep. She was back in New England in her garden and her father was still alive and she still believed in him and the scent of the herbs was coming up from the bed below the window and all was well.

*

Mick went back for Connie early the following morning. He and Emma didn’t look at one another. She was very bright. He said little. Connie was excited at the idea of going home. There at least he had got something right because Connie saw her mother come out to see her and her face shone with joy and surprise and she said, ‘Mam!’ and ran into Isabel’s embrace and heard her mother laugh and then Isabel took her child into her arms and hugged and kissed her and told her how much she had missed her and said how she should tell her everything which had happened at Miss Appleby’s school.

They went in, they spent the afternoon together, they ate dinner, it was so civilized and all the time he thought
about Emma. He didn’t want to, that also made him feel guilty. Was he never to feel anything but? Everywhere he went, everything he did, he was always meant to be somewhere else, to be doing something else. Even now he worried about the pubs, the business, whether it was going on as it should be – it probably wasn’t.

If he had been three people he would have managed, but most of all he remembered the hurt look on Emma’s face, the way that she had made him go, he had to sit here and pretend that he felt as he had felt before when Isabel had been his wife and everything had been better.

It had not been perfect, he admitted now, it never had been perfect, and why should anything be but for the fact that most things were so godawful that we were deserving of something perfect in our lives, just one thing, and he thought the night he had spent with Emma had been that. How bitter she had been! He thought of the words and the way that she had looked at him and he was amazed and rather proud of her. He thought he would never forget the way that her lovely green eyes shimmered when she was angry.