The Wives of Bath (10 page)

Men were hard to come by at school. Only two kinds were allowed inside: funny-looking janitors who had B.O. and ministers, who were more interested in God than sex. Still, both kinds wore trousers, and that was good enough for us. If President Kennedy had ever visited, the whole school would have died.

On the second Friday in October, Mrs. Peddie brought Tory’s father, Canon Quinn, to our Family Life class. I wanted to like him because of Tory, but he had eyebrows like a pair of unfurled bat’s wings. And bad fingers. It was hard not to stare at his fingers. They were rounded at the end like the blind heads of worms. Maybe that’s why he kept them clasped on his lap. He even held them there when he walked.

He was holding his fingers like that when Mrs. Peddie introduced him.

“We’re here to discuss your future role as wives and mothers. An educated woman is of great benefit to her children, isn’t that true, Canon Quinn?” She turned a huge, gummy smile at the
minister. The trouble with Mrs. Peddie was that she always wanted everybody to agree with her. Her optimism was depressing because if you didn’t agree, you knew you were going to hurt her feelings, and if you did agree, then you were lying to her and letting her down anyhow. I wondered if Canon Quinn found it as much of a problem as I did.

“I second that, Mrs. Peddie. Heartily.”

“Although I daresay a few of you will go on to make your mark on the world,” Mrs. Peddie said. She didn’t look at us. Instead she smiled girlishly at Canon Quinn and heaved herself onto the edge of her desk. She was wearing one of her infamous sweaters pulled tight over the shelf of her enormous bosom. “Perhaps right before our eyes sits a famous composer?” (Oh, it’s not me, I thought, but Ismay Thom.) “Or a doctor of divinity.” Mrs. Peddie was suddenly looking in my direction. She often caught my eye in class, hoping I’d answer a question. I never did because she said we didn’t know what we thought about something until we could put it into words and I was dead sure she was wrong about that although I couldn’t exactly say why. That morning I smiled back at her even though I wasn’t interested in something so finky. Not for a second.

“I will read a little about the history of our school, and then our visitor for today has a few words to say to you. You should know that our former principal, Miss Higgs, was engaged once herself.” (There were a lot of gasps from us girls, and Mrs. Peddie giggled too.) “So she was very partial to husbands. Of course, she could never remember the names of her girls’ husbands. But let me quote to you the words of the school historian: ‘Miss Higgs felt it was wrong that girls should look forward to marriage as their only possibility in life.’ ” And here Tory’s father shifted uncomfortably, moving his clasped hands off the desk and onto his chest. “ ‘She desired to see every woman equipped, if the need arose, to maintain herself in dignity …’ ” Mrs. Peddie began to swing her ankle
up and down—as if she thought she was our age—right under Canon Quinn’s nose. He regarded Mrs. Peddie thoughtfully. “ ‘Each of you has some particular gift of your own’—Miss Higgs wrote—‘which can be pressed into service for human betterment while at the same time permitting a small allowance for the unfortunate woman in question.’

“Which, I trust, in good faith, did not happen often,” Canon Quinn added.

Mrs. Peddie wheeled about, her thick leg still swinging, her lower lip wobbling. “I fear it happened more often than we’d like to think, Bruno.”

“Oh.” The Canon stared down at his clasped hands. By now his two index fingers were waving like batons, and he looked as if he were seeing Mrs. Peddie at a great distance. His passivity surprised me. I expected him to sneer at her for flirting with him, maybe push her off the desk. I wanted him to fulfill the promise of his nerve-wracking eyebrows. But he did nothing of the sort. He just sat there the way he did in prayers, looking out the window, his index fingers oscillating. So I began to read the English essay Paulie had given me to check over. Mrs. Peddie had asked us to write a speech by a famous person in history. This is what Paulie wrote:

I could hardly believe my eyes. I read it twice, and then I wrote a reply.

I saw a shadow on the page. I looked up, and who was standing there but Mrs. Peddie herself. She didn’t say anything; she just picked up Paulie’s essay and walked away, leaving me to wait for the axe to fall.

I sat in a hushed classroom at a slanted desk with black cast-iron sides, painting my nails with Tropical Dawn. All around me girls read their books or looked out the window toward the ravine, where the orange-red maples and yellow beeches shimmered in the watery afternoon sunlight. Then, from far down the corridor, I heard a rhythmic pounding so faint I paid no attention. Behind me, one of my studymates started slapping the top of her desk. A moment later, all the girls were slapping their desks with their palms, like oarmasters in the movie
Spartacus
beating time for the slaves who rowed old Roman galleys. And now, just as quickly as it had started, the noise of the girls’ hands died away. I looked up and found myself staring right into the Virgin’s eyes. The desk slapping, which imitated the sound of the Virgin’s footfalls, had been a warning that everybody except me understood. The Virgin pointed to the nail polish on my desk and beckoned to me. I couldn’t move. My legs had turned to water, the way you find yourself in dreams, when you try to run and can’t.

Angrily, the Virgin flung open our study door.

“Mary Beatrice, may I see you in my office, please?” I stood up and went out without looking at anybody.

The Virgin sat down behind her desk and I stood, trying hard to settle my face into a remorseful expression. She cleared her throat awkwardly, as if she was trying to cover up a moment of
nervousness, and brought out a piece of paper. I recognized the handwriting on the paper as that of Mrs. Peddie’s. Suddenly, the Virgin whipped off her half-moon reading glasses and sighed.

“Now, Mary Beatrice. I see here you have a few gatings from the boarding school. Putting nail polish on during study. Going to the bathroom against Miss Phillips’s wishes. Being late for morning inspection. Do you really think I should be cross over things as silly as this?”

The Virgin rested her chin in her hand and gazed at me as if we were sharing a confidence. I began to stutter. I didn’t like to think I was unreasonable.

“I guess those are silly things to do,” I said.

“Yes, yes!” the Virgin said. “I know you have more common sense.”

Now the Virgin brought out Paulie’s essay and my reply. “Don’t you think passing notes in Mrs. Peddie’s class is a silly thing to do?” The Virgin read softly: “Dear Paulie.…” I began to perspire.

“You don’t have to read it. I know what it says,” I said.

“It’s very interesting what you said about Paulie having a good imagination, Mary Beatrice. I think you’re quite right.” She chuckled and looked at me as if I should chuckle, too, and I managed a twittery nervous sound. “You know, of course, that Pauline is a very troubled girl? The staff—well, I’m sure you’ve noticed the troubles they have with her.”

“I guess it’s hard when you don’t have a real mother,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t given myself away like that.

“Paulie has a real mother,” the Virgin said. “She just isn’t able to cope with Paulie. She’s in a mental institution.” The Virgin sat back and looked out the window. She suddenly seemed very sad. “Let’s talk about something else for a moment, shall we? Mrs. Peddie says you are very well read but you don’t speak in her class. Why is that?”

“She thinks we don’t know what we think until we can say it.”

“Yes, that’s a challenge, isn’t it?” The Virgin paused. “Of course, Mrs. Peddie and I differ about the nature of knowledge. Speech is an intellectual tool, and we know some things intuitively without being able to put them into words. Spiritual knowledge, for instance. But you write well, Mary Beatrice, so you will soon learn to speak well too. I understand you have written a very good essay on
Pride and Prejudice
. Personally, I prefer Charlotte Brontë to Jane Austen. Do you know what Charlotte said when a critic told her she should write like Jane?”

I shook my head no. “ ‘Miss Austen is shrewd and observant, but she cannot be great because she is without poetry.’ ” Miss Vaughan smiled cozily, as if she and I were just girls together. “ ‘One sees there only a highly cultivated garden but no open country.’ No open country. Isn’t that wonderful, Mary?” I couldn’t answer.

The Virgin stood up. She put her hand on my shoulder and smiled graciously. “Any friendship you can show Paulie will help. However, all this aside, I am afraid, Mary Beatrice, I am still forced to give you an orderly mark.”

I felt lightheaded. Mouse Bradford has a black mark! Mouse Bradford is in disgrace! And I thought I was a coward, a scaredy-cat who lived in dread of rule breaking and punishments? Well, now Paulie would respect me. I lowered my head and waited to receive the wrath of the Virgin. Instead, she nodded cheerfully.

“There’s no point saying any more to a bright girl like you, Mary Beatrice. I’ll expect sensible behaviour in the future.” She paused and dropped her sulky voice to an even more whispery whisper. “The staff want me to send Paulie back to Ridgeley House, but she’s better off here with us. Will you be my scout and keep an eye on her for me?”

Without knowing how I got there, I found myself in the hall, where Paulie stood at the front of a line of girls that wound all the
way down the stairs outside the Virgin’s office into the junior school. These girls looked me over, as if checking for physical signs that the Virgin had manhandled me, and then went back to their anxious whispering. Paulie wouldn’t look my way. I guessed she suspected me of spinning incriminating tales about her. Behind me, I heard the Virgin step out of her office and whisper in the bullying tone she reserved for the janitors or any girl who resisted her logic, “In here, Paulie. At once.”

When the door to her office closed, I began to clump off down the long winding corridor as fast as my heavy old oxymorons would take me.

The Virgin gave an orderly mark to Paulie and then issued a strange order: Paulie was to walk off her frustrations with the school every evening after study. And I was to go with her. The Virgin said the exercise would help my legs get stronger.

I felt shy about walking with Paulie. I was sure she wished some other girl had been chosen. The first night, we set off in silence toward the ravine. We walked past the grove of camperdown elms, whose twisted branchlets hung down like witches’ fists. I knew from English class that Sir Jonathon had also planted Chinese junipers in the grove, golden yews, English oaks, and eight types of willow, including the cricket-bat willows, whose wood is the best for making cricket bats. Mrs. Peddie made us memorize the names of trees and plants so we would be able to refer to flora and fauna as expertly as the British novelists we studied. She sounded so earnest, I thought it was impossible to be a writer unless you could reel off the names of all the flowering deciduous trees, know which tree was the only deciduous pine in the world (the larch), and know how to treat the sting of a blackthorn bush (rub it with the leaf of a burdock). At the edge of the grounds, Paulie finally stopped.