The Wives of Bath (6 page)

“Who is making that racket!” She looked angrily around the room. “Is it the Sykes girl?”

“I hate this hole,” Pauline said. Her back was still turned to us, but she’d stopped her awful head banging.

“Are you listening to me, Pauline?” she said. “You realize that this term Miss Vaughan expects you to play your part in the boarding school. And that means thinking of others besides yourself. I expect you haven’t given a thought to looking after the new girl, have you?”

Pauline made a rude sound that the boys in the Landing call a raspberry. I wasn’t sure if I should take it personally, and I sat on my bed, my head in my hands. The matron sighed and walked quickly past me to my dresser. I smelled a funny odour, like lamp oil. “Who’s this?” she sniffed, and snatched up my magazine photograph of John Kennedy with his daughter, Caroline, aboard his yawl, the
Manitou
. His nice wavy hair was lying flat and thick against his scalp, even though a strong wind was blowing the boat’s flag straight out like a banner.

“The American president,” I said in a small voice.

“He’s a Catholic, isn’t he?” the matron said. “He’s very young to be president.” She pulled down the photo of my real mother and my favourite picture of Morley, a colour snap taken last August. It showed Morley and Sal and me picnicking at the Indian reserve near Lennox Point. Morley was sprawled in a deck chair on
Thebus
. (Next to Blinky, Morley’s cruiser was his second-favourite top-down toy.) The colour photograph had turned Morley’s two shiny gull wings of grey hair the same shade as the golden fur on Lady. Lady had her nose over the gunnel, wagging her tail. I was sitting far away from Morley, stuffed into an orange life preserver. Sal, in dark green sunglasses, was sitting in a deck chair beside Morley.

“Oh, Miss Phillips. Why don’t you let us leave our snaps up?” Victoria said as the matron took down my photographs. “What harm does it do?”

“There are to be no personal effects on your mirrors,” Miss Phillips said. “There’s a bulletin board over your bed for that purpose.”

“But then our photographs get holes in them from the thumbtacks,” Victoria continued. “It’s better if we can slide them inside the mirror frame.”

The matron used two fingers to pick up Victoria’s matted hairbrush and dropped it inside my roommate’s top drawer. “Victoria, you know how your father and Miss Vaughan feel about you smoking on school property.”

“Oh, don’t tell my father about the cigarettes,” Victoria said. “Please, Miss Phillips. I just had one puff of the first cigarette. I was buying them for someone.”

“I’m afraid you’ve left me no choice.” The matron snatched up the pack and put it in her pocket. “You can take up the matter with Miss Vaughan.”

“Miss Vaughan doesn’t give a shit, and you know it,” Pauline said, jumping to her feet. “And anyways, those are my fags. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Is that true, Victoria?” The matron ignored Pauline.

“What are you asking her for?” Pauline said. “I told you the fags are mine.”

“Very well. Pauline’s foul mouth has brought her an orderly mark.” Miss Phillips sidled out of the room, her back to the door so she could watch my tall roommate. “And there will be lights out early for this room.” The overhead light flicked off as she slammed our door.

I couldn’t see in the sudden darkness, but my two roommates appeared to be lying on their beds staring at each other and whispering. I thought I heard Pauline tell Victoria she’d always be there for her and not to let the matron get her goat. Then the two of them stood up and began to rummage in their dressers for their pyjamas, as if I weren’t there. Victoria noticed me still sitting in my tunic and smiled. “You’d better hurry,” she said, “or old Phooey Phillips will catch you.” She giggled. “Doesn’t she smell fusty? It’s because she uses naphtha to take the stains out of her clothes.”

Another bell rang, and the door opened. A sudden circle of bright light blinded me. “I hope everyone is settling down nicely in there,” a singsongy English voice said. The flashlight beam waved wildly across the room until it lit up Pauline’s bed, where she lay with the covers over her head. “I don’t want to hear that you are up to your old tricks, Paulie. I should think someone in your position would want to be more careful.” A grinning, disembodied head hovered above us, lit from below by the beam of the flashlight. Its plump, powdered cheeks made me think of the giant puffball mushrooms that grew in the farm meadows outside the Landing. “And why is the new girl not undressed?”

“She’s having trouble with the lights off,” Victoria said, and I felt a sweet blush spread up my spine to the top of my torqued shoulder. Oh, Alice, I thought, she likes us.

“I see. Well, perhaps she’ll do better when I close the door,” the new matron said.

“May I please be excused?” Pauline said. “I have to answer a call of nature.”

“So do I,” I said miserably.

“Both of you should have thought of that before. We at Bath Ladies College need to think ahead. No toilet privileges now.” She shut the door.

My eyes began to water. Mouse, don’t be a baby, I told myself in Sal’s meanest shaming voice. Button up, now. If Morley knew what they were putting you through, you wouldn’t be here for a second. I turned away so that Victoria couldn’t see me and lay with my eyes tightly shut.

“Don’t worry,” Victoria whispered from her bed after what seemed like ages. “That’s only Mrs. Peddie, the English teacher. She’s harmless. She lives up in the tower and Phooey lives down in the Blue Wing. Mrs. Peddie is supposed to look after us but she’s so busy she asks Phooey to do it.”

“Victoria, I think I have to go to the washroom now,” I replied.

“Call me Tory,” the other girl said. “And listen. You can pee in a glass, then. Paulie and I have done it before.” She pointed to the glasses on our dressers and giggled. “I’d recommend two for floating bladders.”

Silently I took a glass from my dresser. I pulled down my knickers and squatted over the glass. I missed by a mile and warm pee spilled over my hand and gushed down onto the side of my bed. Pauline made a groaning noise in her sleep.

“It needs a bit of practice.” Giggling, Tory helped me strip my bed and spread out the sheets on the red-tiled window ledge.

“You’ll get used to this place,” she said, and opened the two narrow windows. They swung outward on hinges, away from the metal bars that kept you from sticking your head outside. “That’s the ravine,” she said. “There used to be a hole in the fence, but they patched it up. We aren’t supposed to go there because sometimes a man stands in the woods at lunch hour and opens his coat
at the day girls.” She lowered her voice. “Paulie’s brother told me.”

“Lewis?” I whispered.

“Yes. The Virgin lets him do odd jobs on weekends because he’s too old to be in high school. And he’s not much on books. But wherever Paulie goes, Lewis goes. Paulie and Lewis don’t have parents.”

“Oh,” I said, impressed.

“Paulie was at an Anglican home for problem girls when the Virgin found her. She persuaded the board to let Paulie come here on a scholarship. Before Ridgeley House, Paulie had been living on the street. Can you imagine? And her brother, too.”

“Is he nice?” I asked, thinking of how he looked when he was shaving.

“Lewis and I are in love,” Tory whispered huskily. “You know what that’s like.”

I nodded as if I did, and we stood for a moment, shyly letting our shoulders touch. In the ravine below, I noticed the dark feathery tops of two old jack pines. I listened for the wind in their boughs, but all I could hear was the noise of car horns and motors rising up from the highway in muffled waves. Oh, Morley, I thought, how could you let Sal lock me in a place where you can’t even hear the wind! It had started to rain again, and a moment later Tory closed our window, to keep my sheets from getting soaked. She gave me her extra blanket, and I crawled under it, shivering. “You still haven’t got undressed, Mary,” she said softly. I heard her clear her throat. “I understand. You’re shy. Well, good night, then,” she said, and turned to the wall.

“By the way, my name is Mouse,” I whispered, but the small room was quiet now and smelled horribly of pee. I was afraid to fall asleep. The tower’s cavelike silence made me uneasy, and I felt a heavy sadness rise out of my chest and float off down the long, wavy corridor like a woebegone spirit searching for a way out.

I awoke to a whirring noise—a delicate mechanical sound like the
flap-flap
of tiny metal wings. And then I heard the voice of my dead mother, the other Alice, singing hymn number 576 in
The Book of Common Prayer
. It was by Frances Ridley Havergal.

Trembling, I crept out of bed and looked down at Tory, longing to wake her. But I didn’t dare. I stole out into the pitch-black corridor. About ten yards from me, a small yellow light no bigger than a firefly bounced along the walls of the tower. Not far behind the tiny bobbing light I saw a ghostly form pedalling a giant tricycle. The odd-looking bike consisted of two small wheels at the back and a large one in front, like a child’s tricycle, only the front wheel was three times as large as the back wheels. I recognized the tricycle and the rider from the woman in the portrait Sergeant had shown me on the stairs. The woman wore the same long black dress with a lace collar that made her look like a maid. Only I knew she wasn’t. Somebody like her wasn’t anybody’s servant. She had the same gleeful carelessness about her appearance as the headmistress,
Miss Vaughan. Her cheeks had been messily powdered, and a mannish leather suitcase was strapped to her back. As I watched, she made her bike zigzag slowly back and forth, to avoid the stripes of moonlight on the floor of the tower. The old coach light on the handlebars was swinging crazily from side to side.

Then she saw me and slammed on the brake. Her snowy head jerked forward, and I thought she was going to fly over the handlebars, but she quickly composed herself and turned her powdered face in my direction.

“Do you know where I left this world?” She pointed a crooked white finger to the door at the end of the corridor. “In that room—your room.”

“Where’s my mother?” I whispered. I could no longer hear her singing, and I thought that if I was polite, this odd personage would tell me what I wanted to know. The figure didn’t answer. She sat down again and began to pedal away. The whirring noise grew louder and louder, until the figure was racing full tilt, her shoulders hunched, her arms akimbo. Just before she reached the last music cubicle, she rang her silver-plated bicycle bell, and the door swung open. There stood my dead mother, her hand on the knob.

She looked young and startled, the way she did in the photograph the matron had taken from my dresser mirror. Her soft blond hair—the hair I had liked to hide under when I was a baby—lay in gold puffs across her slender shoulders. I recognized the ruffled silk blouse and long, tailored skirt, whose hem reached halfway to her calves. The ghostly figure dismounted from her bike and turned her broad back to my mother, who proceeded to unbuckle the leather suitcase and take out a great number of objects. I identified an oilcan, a tool that looked like a wrench, and a pair of gardening shears. When this was done, my mother sat down on the piano bench and folded her hands in her lap. And carefully—very, very carefully—the older woman lifted up the
oilcan and tilted it just by my mother’s neck, until a thick, slow stream of oil bled down the front of my mother’s frilled blouse. My mother opened her mouth and started to sing:

Then the older woman put down the oilcan and picked up the gardening shears, and I knew she was going to do something horrible to my mother. Before I could shout a warning, the figure cut a hole in my mother’s blouse, just above her heart. A single tear dribbled down my mother’s cheek. Then I did shout, but I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth; I tried to move, but my bare feet were stuck to the cold wooden floor. Now the older woman began to hack out large clumps of my mother’s hair, as if she were clipping fur balls from a cat whose coat was hopelessly matted.

Then, at last, I could move, and I ran on my spindly legs toward my mother. But just as I reached the cubicle, the headmistress slammed the door in my face. I rattled the knob, but it was locked. I heard the snip of the shears and little cries. Then, nothing. I listened for a long while. Still nothing. And then, so faintly that at first I wasn’t sure it was her, I heard my mother’s gentle voice. It didn’t seem to be coming from inside the cubicle now, but from the walls of the tower itself.

The next morning, after the 7:30 bell, Miss Phillips made us kneel on the floor so she could measure our tunics to see if they fell to mid-knee—perfect school-regulation length. Then she gave me a new set of sheets without mentioning the reason why and sent us out for a morning walk around the hedge. Tory said Miss Phillips was always nice to you after she’d lost her temper; sometimes she even gave you a stash of gum, which was against the rules. Meanwhile, Pauline—or Paulie, as I dared not call her—looked at me suspiciously from under her puffy bangs, and I guessed that she was scornful of my act of desperation.

After breakfast, the three of us walked together down the winding flights of stairs to the infirmary for our medical checkups. Inside, a line of girls stood with their heads down. All of them had stripped to their bra and underpants, except for some of the fat girls, who tried to get away with wearing their school blouses until the last minute. A few girls turned around to stare at us with fearful faces, and I realized they were looking at Paulie. She sucked her teeth and pointed her index and baby fingers in their direction—the sign that means you’re full of it. One or two laughed, and I heard the phrase “that Sykes girl” whispered among them, as if Paulie’s name were a swear word. Paulie abruptly turned her back and pulled down her purple bloomers, mooning the crowd. Then she yanked at the handle on the wall behind us and a panel door
slid up, exposing what looked like the insides of a cupboard. “See you later, suckers,” Paulie called, and ducked quickly into the dumbwaiter, pulling its door down with a bang. All around us, girls giggled or talked in low, astonished voices.