The World Before Us (39 page)

George could only blame himself. He had arranged Mr. Hibbitt’s hiring solely through letters. On paper the man had a superior education, and the reference he had provided from his last post was excellent. More importantly, Hibbitt had written that he was willing to step in for the former village tutor immediately. Still, by the time Hibbitt had entered the parlour, George knew that if the agreement had not been hastily arranged because of his own impatience, it was likely that Hibbitt wouldn’t have been hired. And if there had been other applicants, Hibbitt wouldn’t have lasted the day.

Standing beside the sofa as stiffly as the stuffed pheasant under the nearby glass, Bernard Hibbitt listened while George Farrington outlined the terms of his employment. He inquired after the pupils and Farrington elaborated on the number and disposition of the boys who would be under his tutelage. Hibbitt conveyed his enthusiasm as best he could, restating his belief in the duty of the educator to ensure opportunities for advancement to all children, regardless of the conditions from which they’d risen.

Things did not go well from there. Within a week of that conversation a number of the parents in the village had complained about how sternly religious they found Hibbitt to be, citing his threats of damnation as a means of enforcing studiousness. It wasn’t that a handful of them didn’t employ similar tactics; it was Hibbitt’s
enthusiasm
they objected to: how he wed his threats to corporal punishment. Which is why, a mere ten days after they’d first been introduced, Hibbitt found himself standing in Farrington’s small parlour once again, casting his eyes nervously over the watercolour landscapes gracing the walls, the
clocks
tick-tock
ing unevenly while he waited to see if he was going to be sent out.

Hibbitt prided himself on engaging with other men, especially those of ways and means, without duplicity, so when Farrington, having offered tea that Hibbitt refused due to a welling discomfort in his stomach, asked if he meant the boys harm, he replied stiffly from the sofa, “Only when they deserve it.”

Farrington paused to consider his tutor’s logic, and Hibbitt became conscious of the way he was sitting, each bone in his torso stacked in perfect alignment, his hands resting flatly on his knees.

“Did your own father strike you when you were a child?” Farrington asked at last.

“He did.”

“Well”—Farrington sighed, as if the difference ought to indicate his stand and instruction on the matter—“mine did not.”

The walk Farrington proposed out over the lawn and through the gardens was uncomfortable for Hibbitt. Although his anxiety was diminished, he was still conflicted as to what exactly had been decided, from which families the complaints had come, and how he was expected to maintain order without corporal means. In the end he did all but ask if he could still
strike them a little
. The walk was made even more awkward by the fact that Hibbitt preferred to move with purpose whereas Farrington strolled like a woman. They were also under surveillance: the stable hand Dawes, who was the older brother of one of Hibbitt’s more amiable pupils, watched them unabashedly as he filed the hooves of a carriage horse. Mrs. Farrington was similarly caught glaring down at the men from one of the upstairs rooms, turning away when Hibbitt looked up from his inspection of the alpine plots. He attempted a quick smile but she had released the curtain before it reached his lips.

Hibbitt checked, as he always did in these situations, that his coat and felt bowler were in order. It was, after all, vital that he take great pains not only in his presentation but also in his manner if he was to conceal his attraction to other men. He needed to appear innocuous, and believing himself to be so, he regarded those who watched him overlong as subjects requiring greater dissimulation on his part.

On their last turn at the end of the property Farrington gestured to the trellis he was putting in by the folly, and Hibbitt thought that he detected a similar quality in his companion, a looseness of the body and lightened manner that had become more evident the farther removed he was from his house—an animation that, although directed toward the progress of the magnolias and
Daphnes
, was most pleasant to behold.

As he opened the cottage door for Farrington two weeks later, the tutor tried to parse what he’d done wrong. The boys had been behaving better since he’d softened his approach, and all but one were memorizing their verses and handing their lessons in on time.

Farrington took his hat off and brushed his coat sleeves as if the fog had affixed itself there. He closed the door behind him and said, “Bernard,” as if they were friends.

Still perplexed by what kind of business might necessitate a visit so late in the evening, Hibbitt suddenly realized that he had no wine or sherry to offer. He said stupidly, “Mr. Farrington, I hope I haven’t failed you in some way, to bring you out at this hour—” Though even as he said the words, he started to suspect by the man’s expression that it was the other thing.

“No, Hibbitt, you have not.”

They were still standing, and Hibbitt was thinking he ought to manoeuvre the chairs nearer to the flagging fire when Farrington stepped in front of him. In all of his previous experience, it had never happened
like this. Still, Hibbitt knew in an instant that he would be required to declare himself first, and that if he did not, nothing would happen. So slowly, and without stepping back, he went down on his knees, and George Farrington removed his coat.

Rules were quickly established. Hibbitt was not allowed to visit Inglewood House or the grounds and could only approach the property when messaged because George suspected his demeanour might give the recent nature of their acquaintance away. Norvill Farrington was a regular visitor and George knew his brother would relish having a suspicion to wield against him. The beauty of the message system was its simplicity: if one of the servants was cleaning George’s best saddle on the wood frame by the stable this meant
wait inside the mouth of the first cave at the end of the trail
. A book sent to the school with a blue bookmark meant that Hibbitt would be expected in the pumphouse by the lake after supper. In each case he was to drop a handkerchief on the path if he was seen. Once, however, in daylight, the two men fell to walking the trail from the village within visual proximity of each other and George dared, unexpectedly, to turn up the trail toward the grotto, lifting a gloved hand to indicate that he should be followed. It was an absurdly easy business for them to meet in those spring months, and even in the rainy stretch of the summer, although once Hibbitt felt certain he’d been seen in the woods as he cut back from the caves. He was peeling a fig George had brought him, and looking up the trail from under the dome of his umbrella he thought he caught a glimpse of one of Prudence’s maids.

What Hibbitt thought then, in his arrogance, was that the world was ordered in a way that served him: that the stable boy, or the footman, or the house girl who sometimes came to the schoolroom with a wrapped book he’d “requested loan of” from George’s library, were somehow his emissaries as well as Farrington’s. It gave him a slow pleasure to have
them stand on the threshold of the cottage or in the door jamb at the school and wait while he unwrapped his offerings and composed a receipt of thanks. And so, that autumn, when the books stopped coming and the saddle stopped receiving its extra care, he pushed the idea of what was really lost out of his head and tried to convince himself that he missed being waited on as much as he missed the object and acts that occurred beyond the purview of the waiting servant’s patient stare.

Hibbitt was never sure if it was George or Prudence who suddenly called off the affair. What little he eventually gleaned came from the gossip of the house’s low-ranking servants—gossip that habitually spread to the village and, if lascivious, to the older boys under his care. All he knew at the time was that shortly after one of his rendezvous with George in the cave, Norvill had arrived for a picnic, along with a number of other guests from London. George, thrusting himself angrily into Hibbitt on that last occasion, had seemed almost enraged, complaining afterward about the pressure of the arrangements, the suffocating details, the idea that he had to whore himself out for funding.

Talk of Norvill Farrington’s entanglement with a married woman had cropped up in the butcher shop the day after the picnic. According to a stable hand known to one of the boys under Hibbitt’s care, a fearful row at the house had occurred, followed quickly by a set of early departures.

25

The waitress from last night, Katie, her hair in a high ponytail, smirks at Jane when she walks into the pub, so Jane sits in one of the booths in the dining area and a different girl in a short black skirt comes over to take her order.

We are starting to feel like locals here. It doesn’t take much for us; we seize on the familiar, crave routine. We recognize the workbooted men at the bar, the rough cluster of boys Blake’s age guzzling pints at the high table and the smell from the deep fryer that wafts to us when the kitchen door swings open. Those of us who can read stand behind Jane and survey the specials on the chalkboard, play at making informed decisions; try words like
fennel
and
parsnip
in our mouths to see if a taste or texture appears.

Blake arrives well before eight, unaware that Jane has been here almost an hour. He slides into the booth, offers Jane his hand palm-up on the table, and says, “I don’t even know your last name. You could fuck off back to London and I’d never be able to find you again.”

Jane narrows her eyes. “I don’t know yours either.”

He laughs, retracts his hand. “I think I’ve got it worked out that you
wouldn’t exactly be racing around the country trying to find me.” His eyes settle on the empty bowl of soup and the last scraps of lettuce on the plate she’s pushed toward the wall. “Heading out?”

“No.”

“Okay, back in a minute.” He stands up. As he passes her side of the booth he leans in and kisses her on the mouth.

Blake brings Jane a glass of wine and then clears her plate, taking it over to the barman and coming back with his pint. He’s showing off, and she lets him. A petty part of her is thinking that he wouldn’t know what fork to use in a good restaurant, that he probably doesn’t own a suit, that she ought to be tolerant and let him have his little display. But then, when he’s sitting across from her, when he takes her hand and rubs his thumb back and forth over her skin, she’s buoyed despite herself; even though he’s only nineteen, he’s been sweet and tender and honest with her.

“So is now a good time to ask if you have a girlfriend?”

He raises his eyebrows. “You applying?”

“What about the waitress over there? Or that girl from two nights ago, in the silver vest top?”

He smiles and lifts his shoulders.

“How many women have you slept with?” As soon as it comes out of her mouth she feels ridiculous.

“Seriously,
that’s
where you’re taking this?”

Jane imitates his noncommittal shrug.

Blake starts bouncing his knee under the table like a nervous kid. “Five. Listen, Helen, it’s not a thing, so stop thinking it is.”

“What?”

“Our ages.”

“I’m thirty-four.”

“And? Who gives a fuck? This doesn’t have to be some huge all-or-nothing event.” He’s annoyed, and for a second she thinks that he’s getting up to leave but instead he comes around and plops himself down
onto the bench beside her. “What do you want me to say here? I would like to have sex with you again, but I’d also be happy sitting here with you and talking all night.”

“Right, well, I’m not exactly sure how to take that.”

He leans in and kisses her and then dunks his thumb into his pint and runs it lightly under her right eye and then under her left.

“What are you doing?!”

“War paint.”

Jane laughs. “This is a war?”

“No. This is something else.”

By ten o’clock the waitress working the other end of the pub, and every other girl within five years of Blake’s age, has walked past the table to have a look at Jane. It becomes a running joke; every time someone walks to the back of the pub where their booth is, Blake automatically says, “Sorry about that.” It occurs to Jane more than once that she should tell him her real name, admit something more truthful about herself, but the banter is easy—“If you could only listen to one piece of music for the rest of your life …” and “Where would you like to travel to?”—and more honest than “So, how long will you be in Inglewood?”

A tinny version of “Anarchy in the U.K.” blares in Blake’s coat pocket. He roots around for his mobile, says
hullo
and then excuses himself to speak to the caller. Jane watches him exit the pub; she assumes he’s talking to his maybe-current girlfriend or a mate he’s told about the thirty-four-year-old from London he’s banging. While she waits for him to come back she slides her hand over the wood grain of the table, swirls her finger over the pool of condensation left by his last pint.

When she was fifteen, she, William and Lily had sat in the booth opposite the one where she is now. At the end of the lunch William had gone to pay but realized he’d forgotten his wallet in the glovebox. He explained
the situation to the barman, asked if he could run up the road to get it, said that the girls would stay. The barman called them “collateral” and laughed. Jane had forgotten that.

If
that
Jane was still here, if she still existed in some way—a self-conscious fifteen-year-old in hoop earrings and a new blue dress who wants, more than anything, to be seen—what would she make of Jane now? Would she be happy that grown-up Jane is looking over at her, at her nervousness and exaggerated pronouncements, at the spot of gravy Lily had splashed onto Jane’s lap, at the shoes that gave her a blister within an hour of putting them on?

We watch Jane watching herself, watching the girl she was before we met her. Her finger circling the mark made by Blake’s pint in this world, Lily spinning a key on a ribbon in the other.