The Wives of Bath (13 page)
Authors: Susan Swan
So I was starting to climb up onto the mounting block when Paulie motioned for me to stop. A little way down the tunnel a thick, deep voice was singing in a language I didn’t recognize. I backed into the bike, and one of its wheels began to spin round
and round, clinkety-clink. About twenty yards down the tunnel a man’s body appeared. It was Willy, the other janitor. I don’t think he could see who we were in the murky light coming from the boiler room, but he saw something because he began to march toward us waving his arms and shouting incomprehensible words at us in a thick accent. I stood shaking beside Paulie, who threw something at him—I think it was a wrench she must have grabbed from the trunk.
“Stay away from us, you dirty foreigner!”
Willy stopped and stared at the place where the wrench had grazed his leg. Paulie pulled out a string of small firecrackers from her pocket—the bad kind that Sal says will put out babies’ eyes. The next thing I knew she had lit and thrown them at Willy’s head. They exploded in the air, and when he ducked, screeching, she lit and threw another batch into an old garbage can beside the boiler-room door. The second explosion sounded like a machine gun going off half-cocked. Willy put his hands over his ears, and Paulie took my arm and pulled me through a small passageway I hadn’t noticed before. I recognized the coal shed when I saw the old chairs with their split sides and the ugly curtains Paulie had put up to hide her altar to Kong. Paulie pushed open a hinged door, and we walked out into the night.
It was raining heavily—too heavily to see much except the shape of the old box hedge and the tops of the trees in the ravine. But the sky to the south had partially cleared and shone softly orange from the lights of Toronto. The spire of Kings College was also visible. In the falling rain, it looked like a privileged kingdom far beyond our simple lives as boarders at Bath Ladies College. Then Paulie poked me, and we hurried away from the mass of the ravine and up a stone path to the front entrance, where a long figure in a bulky overcoat was sitting on the stone railing. I saw a frieze of white hair and a bobbing prick of orange light below a pair of glinting spectacles.
“We’re in luck,” Paulie whispered. “We’ve caught old Cockshutt smoking. She won’t dare to report us now.”
We walked up the front steps and, sure enough, the switchboard operator only frowned as we slipped past her into the vaulted stone foyer and crept up Sir Jonathon’s grand staircase, still carrying the goggles and the diary Paulie had stolen. I expected to find the Virgin waiting for us. But the pillows arranged under the covers to look like our bodies were still in place. And our bedroom was empty except for Ismay, who was snoring next to the wide-open window. I knew, without Paulie saying so, that I’d passed another test. I, Mouse Bradford, of all people, was a troublemaker, a bad girl, a rule breaker—and I owed it all to Paulie, who had helped me outfox the Virgin in the game of us against the old biddies.
The next day, Paulie and I read the letters she had stolen from Mrs. Peddie’s apartment. They had been written by Miss Vaughan and Mrs. Peddie.
November 16, 1953
Greetings, dear one,
Finally my arm is strong enough for me to write to you. Late yesterday afternoon the surgeon dropped in and told me I must stay two more weeks for bed rest and observation. Two more weeks, Lola! And I am to do water therapy for my sprained shoulder. The concussion is not serious, even though it kept me unconscious for a day. Dr. Tully says the body has its ways of healing, and as long as I do not overexert myself, my poor head will mend on its own. I am still having headaches, but the doubling of my vision seems to have gone. Dr. Tully says he hopes the person who did this to me will be locked up for years to come. For some reason, I cannot bring myself to tell him it was a police officer. I shall not tell father either. I am afraid what happened would break his heart. We are so close, and yet he cannot—would not, Lola-understand. Do you know, he doesn’t even believe that I can balance my own budget? As if I don’t know anything about figures! I, who excelled in mathematics at school! Lola, he used to ask my youngest brother to go over my bank account with me. It is puzzling, isn’t it?
However, it is true I do not value money. In fact, I am guilty of excessive frugality. Perhaps that was what my father was getting at with Jason and my budget. I travelled through Europe for less than £40, staying at youth hostels. And now we are teaching at Bath Ladies College for the glorious sum of $2,000 a year. That is two-and-a-half thousand less than what an English teacher gets at a Toronto high school, Lola. I thought it was going to be $2,000 a term. I think I shall have to tell Miss Higgs at Christmas that I am finding it awfully hard to manage on this.
Your Vera
P.S. I’m afraid I am not ready to talk about what happened, Lola. If you were here, no doubt you would chide me with that graceful smile of yours, and press me to unburden myself. It also pleases me to think of all the things you would find to say about how one can pass one’s time productively in a hospital. I would pretend not to take any of your optimistic talk seriously and then off I’d go to my water therapy, secretly cheered up. Rest assured, I am doing my best to make myself strong so I can hold you in my arms again and kiss the corners of your dear mouth.
November 21, 1953
Dear Vera,
Miss Higgs came into the staff room yesterday bringing your news. As I suspected, she said you are rushing things—ordering everyone about and refusing to listen to the nurses when they tell you to lie quietly. Now, Vera! You are very strong-minded, and you know you always overestimate your strength. Oh, I can cope, you like to tell me. Nonsense. You are as in need of tender care as anyone else. You simply must take things slowly. There, now I’ve scolded you properly. I am coming down with some bed socks and other assorted woollies. Just the thing for the Toronto General’s cheerless beds.
With all due,
Lola
P.S. Of course, I wish I had stayed in the hotel lounge. He couldn’t have beaten
two
women that savagely. And I am terribly terribly angry about what happened, Vera. It is an outrage that a woman of your stature has been subjected to an attack and possibly disfigured because of prejudice. Unfortunately, the students seem to know something of this. Neither Miss Higgs nor I can put our finger on who is spreading the story, but there is gossip in the boarding school that you were the victim of a rape.
November 30, 1953
My darling Lola,
I am sorry my little outburst of affection made you uncomfortable when you came to see me. It is just that I have been in here so long, Lola. And now the prospect of staying in over Christmas for more tests! I do, of course, realize the incident at the Continental has made you more cautious. And I curse the brute for making you feel that way. I know, I know, we ought to be more prudent now, but my stubborn heart does not want to give that constable or anyone like him the satisfaction of interfering with the love you and I feel for each other. I am so grateful I have you in my life. Do you remember the day we met at Cheltenham Ladies College, Lola? You thought I looked like a bluestocking because I’d walked onto the grounds at Cheltenham in my trousers and rucksack. I was used to hiking in Europe, you see. Meanwhile, there was Miss Higgs in one of her funny old dark dresses riding her ancient three-wheel bike round and round the botany pond. She was going at quite a fast clip, and she was being followed by you and Charles with a tea tray. You did not seem to be bothered in the least by the sight of an elderly woman in strange clothes traipsing about the lawn on what looked like an oversized child’s tricycle.
When I mentioned this to you later, you pointed out to me that Miss Higgs was doing the sensible thing. She wore Edwardian dresses because they were roomier than our modern clothes, and she rode an old three-wheeler because she could keep her balance on it better. She is getting on, you said, but she needs her exercise
like everybody else. And didn’t I realize three-wheelers used to be a serious sport round the turn of the century. In short, I was the iconoclast in my trousers. Ah, well! Who would have ever thought that day that you and I would come to mean so much to each other. And that we would follow Miss Higgs back to teach in Canada, the land of my birth.
Your Vera
P.S. I do appreciate your outrage, Lola. I myself do not feel angry. I refuse to take prejudice personally, you see. And I have always known of the dangers. I am referring to Zooey Armstrong’s dreadful experience at Cherry Beach. Punched and raped by our own police officers in front of Nan Tyler (who could do nothing to help her dear one). It is abominable, Lola, but at least you and I were spared that.
January 9, 1954
Dear Vera,
Miss Higgs has caught the culprit who was spreading the stories about you. It started with an article in the
Hush Free Press
. Apparently, Jellie Godsoe’s father works on this smut rag and showed Jellie the clipping which described your beating at the hands of the police. The
Hush
office is near city hall, next door to the Continental, and one of their reporters witnessed the assault firsthand.
Hush
has no idea you were beaten because you love a woman. The paper is on a crusade against violence on the police force, and they see you as a middle-class victim who was wrongly attacked. (All true enough, as far as it goes.) I have given the clipping to Miss Higgs, who says she will send it to you later. It is too long for me to go into here. The headline reads, “Decent Citizen Dragged, Pushed, and Knocked Unconscious by Ruthless Cop.” The article says you were attacked because the police officer thought you resembled a Teresa McClusky, who was being sought on a charge of kidnapping a Mississauga baby. The officer thought he had found the missing girl and imagined arresting her would work to his credit when the merit badges and promotions were being handed out.
The paper makes no mention of the fact that the officer saw you kissing me in the booth when he walked in to have a coffee. (Oh, Vera—and I had picked that booth because I thought no one could see us there.) There was a lengthy description of the constable twisting your arm and ripping your blouse and then banging your head over and over against the doorjamb. His lack of experience was pinpointed as the cause of the misunderstanding. Take heart, my love. We shall soldier on.
Your own
Lola
We read these letters in silence, passing the pages to each other in wonder. It thrilled and frightened me to think we had stumbled on secret documents that proved the gossip about the two women was true. Paulie said it was like getting your hands on the secret of the atom bomb. She said she intended to use the letters to get the Virgin to do whatever she wanted, and she hid them in a Kotex box she put in my drawer. She said nobody would suspect me of taking them. But when I went to check on them after breakfast, the letters were gone. Miss Phillips, I guessed, had discovered them during morning inspection and taken them to Miss Vaughan. We waited for me to be called on the carpet, but the weeks passed, and although nothing happened, Paulie and I continued to puzzle over the matter in private.
A week after Paulie stole Mrs. Peddie’s letters, I had the opportunity to see the two women’s love for myself. When it happened, I was in the leaves room—our way station between the school and the outside world. Alone there, I always felt a little closer to Morley, as if he and Sal and Lady were just over the next hill and not a hundred miles or so up the long, thin asphalt highway that connected Madoc’s Landing to the strange life I lived in the city. The room consisted of an oak desk, scales for weighing parcels, and a big, black telephone, which you could have all to yourself if you buttered up the switchboard operator, Miss Cockshutt. And, of course, there were the leaves books. Each boarder had to let the school know in advance what her plans were for the weekends and sign her guests in in one of the green leaves scribblers labelled “out” or “in.” The guests had to be one of the hosts approved by your parents, or you couldn’t go. There was no problem in my case, since my host was my uncle. He was my dead mother’s brother and a man of the cloth, as he liked to say, whose annual salary was the equivalent of his brother-in-law’s insurance payments. I had his letter in my pocket to prove it.
Nov. 2, 1963
Dear Mary Beatrice,
Your stepmother has written to ask Margaret and me if we would take you out for the weekend when I am in Toronto for our diocese
meeting. She is unable to have you home for the long weekend, as she is having an operation for a collapsed bladder.
Your aunt and I have engaged a room at the Park Plaza so that we will be able to treat you in the style which you are accustomed to at home.
With best wishes and affection,
Uncle Winnie
For no good reason, the table stacked with our leaves-room books suddenly started to shake. I heard the sound of an aggressively cleared throat, and heavy shoes hammered Sir Jonathon’s miraculous herringbone floor. The Virgin was on the warpath again. She couldn’t see me behind the frosted panes of the leaves-room door. I stood squished and trembling against the wall, watching her through the bevelled edge of the glass.
“Now what is the matter?” the Virgin snarled at somebody I couldn’t see. You know George Orwell’s picture of the future? The heel of a soldier’s boot coming down on a human face? That’s how brutish the Virgin sounded that day. As if she were going to step on me or the next poor soul who got in her way.
“Oh, Vera, is it true? Are we going to merge with Kings College?” I recognized the British accent. “You know what happened at St. Mildred’s when they went coed. The girls chew gum in their uniforms and show up for debates in slacks.”
“Look—I’ve heard just about enough of this.” Now I could see Lola the Les, the Virgin’s girlfriend, in one of her too tight sweaters. She reached up, as if she and the Virgin were someplace else, anywhere but Bath Ladies College, and patted the Virgin’s cheek. “You poor thing. It must be so hard on you.” To my surprise, the Virgin bowed her big, snowy head and began to tremble all over like Lady when she crawls under the bed during a thunderstorm. I heard little gulping noises. I think the Virgin was sobbing.