The Custodian of Paradise (19 page)

“Was once married to a woman who, since leaving him and me, has prospered in New York.”

“You may be interested to know that, at this moment, in the manual training centre, Smallwood is learning the hard way from the boys of Bishop Feild.”

They were not yet in the manual training centre by the time I got outdoors. The centre was behind the main hall and it was for this reason that I hadn’t seen the boys while I was on my way to Reeves. There were about fifteen of them crowded around Smallwood, who was holding together at the throat and chest his ragged jacket as if he believed the others meant to steal it from him. His glasses were rimed with snow, the lenses all but obscured, as if he dared not drop his guard long enough to clean them. His peaked cap lay nearby in the snow.

“Look, Smallwood,” I heard Prowse say, “I don’t know if you did it, but Reeves says we’ve got to blame
someone
or none of us will graduate.”

“I did it,” I shouted. “I sent the letter.”

“Go away, Fielding,” Prowse said.

“I did it,” I said, “to get back at Smallwood.”

“For what?”

“He insulted me. Said things about my mother.”

“Then why do you care what happens to him now?” Prowse said.

I was both surprised and pleased to hear a hint of envy in his voice.

“Because I do. I’ve changed my mind.”

I paid little attention to what they said after that. They took me into the manual training centre and bent me over a wooden sawhorse with the apparent intention of flogging me with my cane. I heard Prowse say that Smallwood should have “first go.”

“I don’t want to,” Smallwood said.

There was laughter and Prowse said something that I couldn’t hear, after which they left, laughing and shouting.

I straightened up from the sawhorse. I thought I was alone until Smallwood spoke.

“Why? I never said a word about your mother.”

“Put the cane on the floor and leave,” I said. I heard the cane hit the floor, then Smallwood’s departing footsteps. As if he, as if all of them, were still there, I did not turn around. My face was hot with spite, shame, humiliation.

When I left the centre, it was dark outside. Sleet-flecked snow stung my face as I began my way across the field. I cleared a path with my cane, beating my way through waist-deep snowdrifts as the wind roared high above me in the treetops.

That night, I lay awake, fully clothed, on my bed, waiting for my father to come home.

He did so earlier than usual because of the storm. I heard him move about for a few minutes. Then, with a loud squeaking of his chair, he settled down. I got up and went downstairs to the front room, where a layer of coal he had just put in the fireplace was blazing. He was in his chair, staring at the fire.

“You’re home early,” I said. “Would you like something to eat?”

“Why are you up?” he said. “You need your sleep.”

“A woman in my condition.”

“A girl.”

“Tomorrow, Father, I will be expelled from Bishop Spencer.”

He yawned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“What’s that?” he said.

“Expelled,” I said. “Tomorrow, Miss Emilee is going to expel me.”

“You didn’t tell her—”

“About my condition? No. Something else.”

“What?” he said, looking hard at me.

“Did you hear about the letter that was written to the
Morning Post?”
I said.

“What—what letter?”

“An anonymous letter. Made with words cut out from books. A letter about the dorm at Bishop Feild. About how bad things are. No coal for heat. Rats. Not enough food. The masters keeping school fees for themselves.”

“I haven’t heard a thing about it.”

“I confessed to writing it. Today. I told Headmaster Reeves.”

“Why on earth did you do that?”

“Reeves was blaming Smallwood for it.”

“Then Smallwood is to blame.”

“Do you think so?”

“Why did you confess, girl—?”

“Because Smallwood is the father of my child. I can’t help feeling
something
for him—”

“This is ridiculous, girl. Ridiculous. Absurd.”

“I have to leave school, anyway. Besides, why do you assume that I
didn’t
write it?”

“Of course you didn’t. I mean, why would you?”

“Why would Smallwood?”

“Because he is low-born.”

   
Chapter Five
   

“I
DO NOT BELIEVE THAT YOU WROTE THAT LETTER
,” M
ISS
Emilee said.

“You have been speaking with Headmaster Reeves.”

“My opinions are formed independently of his.”

“Do you believe, like Headmaster Reeves, that Smallwood wrote the letter?”

“No. I do not. I believe you are protecting someone else.” She looked at me as if to say that, as she already knew who this someone was, there was no point in my withholding the name.

“I am not
protecting
Smallwood. Merely making sure he isn’t blamed for what I did.”

“Yet you say you did it so that he
would
be blamed.”

“I had a change of heart. I wish I had it before I sent the letter.”

“I have read the letter. It does not implicate Smallwood. If you had meant to get him into trouble, you would have found a better way.”

“Headmaster Reeves is certain Smallwood wrote that letter.”

“So he says.”

“You think Headmaster Reeves is lying?”

“His judgment is imperfect. In this case.”

“So you at least believe that Smallwood didn’t write it.”

“The letter neither implicates nor absolves him.”

“Yet you think it absolves me?”

“Yes. It was written by a boy. Or a man.”

“Neither is difficult to imitate. I have been imitating boys for years.”

“No, Miss Fielding. You have been spending time with boys. You have never wanted to be one of them. Never imitated them. Merely sported with them. As you do with everyone. Including me.”

“I have confessed to writing the letter, Miss Stirling. Everyone knows that.”

“Confessions can be retracted.”

“You want me to lie?”

“To stop lying. To me, if to no one else.”

“I wrote the letter.”

“When is the baby due?”

I was so unprepared for the question that I could not speak, only wince and look away from her. My face felt as though it must be scarlet red.

Miss Emilee smiled. “Caught off guard and stuck for words. A sight I thought I’d never see.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” I managed to blurt out at last. “That is a reckless accusation.”

“Miss Fielding. Two weeks ago, long before the matter of the letter to the
Morning Post
, your father wrote to me saying he believed that you were pre-consumptive. In need of prolonged bedrest. And therefore you would soon be leaving school. To convalesce with your mother in New York.”

“I
have
been feeling poorly. Fatigued. Feverish sometimes. My father is a doctor. A chest doctor.”

Miss Emilee smiled again.

“Miss Fielding. The expression on your face is all the proof I need. But if you wish to know how I guessed your secret—and it
was
just a guess—I didn’t know for certain until now. Your father writes to say that you will soon be leaving school. A precautionary measure, he says. May you re-enrol next year? I tell him that of course you may. Yet I have never seen a more healthy, robust-looking girl than you. We have girls at Spencer who spend half the year at home with aches and pains and colds. Yet it is you who have never missed a day who must be sent away to convalesce. And then along comes this business of the letter.
Which you, when you hear that Smallwood has been blamed for it, say you wrote so that Smallwood would be blamed for it. Knowing that, because of your confession, you would be expelled. For you no loss because, although you may not have told your father yet, you have no intention of re-enrolling next year. If you did, you would not have spoken to Headmaster Reeves the way you did the other day, knowing he would repeat your every word to me.”

“I doubt that he repeated every word.”

“I dare say you are right. I dare say I am too.”

“Your version of events neither implicates nor absolves me.”

“No. That’s true. But you gave yourself away when I made my lucky guess.”

“I have made my one confession.”

“Sheilagh. Listen to me. It is not because I intend to tell anyone your secret that I have confronted you. Only to offer you my help and advice. In case you are not entirely satisfied with whatever arrangements your father has made.”

“I have made my one confession.”

“Did the father of your child write the letter to the
Morning Post?
As some sort of prank that got out of hand? Is that it? Is that who you’re really protecting?”

“Miss Stirling—”

“Are you in love, Sheilagh?”

I managed, with a deep breath, to pre-empt what would have been a flood of tears. Again my face was burning.

“No, Miss Stirling. I am not in love. Nor, I believe, is anyone in love with me. Nor have they ever been.”

“But you were once in love.”

“Yes. Once. Only once.”

“You will fall in love again. And
be
loved by someone.”

“I find this—a pointless subject.”

“Sheilagh, was it by any chance to protect your father that you confessed?”

“You would not ask if you knew my father.”

“The letter that he wrote to me. It was very—digressive. In some ways unsettling. As if he might be—having difficulties. With concentration. With—coping. With distinguishing between what was true and what he wished was true.”

“My father is a doctor, not a writer. He rarely writes letters.”

“Will you remember my offer of help and advice?”

“I assume that I am expelled.”

I saw that Miss Emilee had tears in her eyes.

“I suggest that we leave that assumption to everyone else. I will say that you are leaving school because your father believes you are ill. That is all. I will never use the word ‘expelled.’ And should you change your mind and wish to re-enrol—”

“I will not be coming back, Miss Stirling.”

“I am sad to hear it. More so, perhaps, than you will ever understand. But not surprised.”

“You—I will remember you, Miss Stirling.”

“Goodbye, Miss Fielding.”

Not being at liberty to rebuke my father for framing Smallwood, I chose instead to speak to him about my mother whenever I had the chance, knowing how much it would agitate him. But sometimes I spoke sincerely.

“Were we ever happy, Father? The three of us, I mean. Was there no time in those six years before she left when we were happy? I seem to remember that there were. Or have I just imagined it?”

“No. There were such times. Though I wonder now if she was just pretending. If all along she knew that one day she would leave. She always seemed so—restless. She’d smile, but then, as if she’d remembered some unpleasantness, the smile would fade.”

“What sorts of things did we do together?”

“We had the same nickname for each other. A family nickname it was that stood for all sorts of things. D.D. Darling Daughter. Darling Daddy. Dimple Dumpling. That’s what she called you.”

“Really? My mother called me that? What did we call her?”

“Enough of this. I’m sorry, girl. We stopped using nicknames when she left.”

“Yes. You call her different sorts of nicknames now.”

“I have never accused
her
of licentiousness,” he said. “A moment’s weakness at most. After having had too much to drink, perhaps. He may have forced himself upon her. She may have been
entirely
innocent.”

“Like me.”

“I will not speak of that.”

“You think she left because she knew I was not your child.”

“I can think of no other reason.”

“Perhaps you might be able to if you were not so opposed to farfetched speculation. But tell me. How could she have
known
that I was not your child.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how could she have known for certain? I can think of only one way.”

“NO, NO. Is there no depth to which you will not go? I assure you that we were, in every sense of the word, married.”