Men On White Horses

by Pamela Haines

  Mother was in bed a great deal that autumn, and over Christmas. It was to do with a baby, Sarah said.

  ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘From God, of course,’ said Nurse, ‘although it may be different in your religion. God gives it to the stork and he brings it.’

  ‘Why can’t a peacock do it?’ Why not?

  Sarah explained: ‘They can’t fly high enough. Can’t get to Heaven first. Asides, they’re not gentle like storks.’ There was a picture of a stork, his precious bundle in his beak.

  But when he brought the baby he had not been quite gentle enough. It was dead. Mother was very ill: she asked for Uncle Frederick. Edwina cried in the night for the little brother who was not.

  Part Two

  1911

  Grandma Illingworth was carried in, supported under the arms, wrapped round in rugs. Her arrival was much the same ceremony as when she came to tea. It was just that she had come to die.

  ‘I am dying, Edwina,’ she said, when Edwina was taken up to see her. She was in the big room in the west wing. Bath Bun was with her and barked protectively when Edwina came in.

  ‘Sit down, child.’

  Aunt Josephine nodded to Edwina to obey. She was sitting in there already with her knitting. A dark blue leather-bound book lay on the table at the end of the large bed. Edwina read out the title.

  Grandma corrected her. ‘Woothering Heights. By your age,’ she said, ‘I had stolen a copy from my father’s library. And read it –’

  Aunt Josephine said: ‘Not really suitable –’

  ‘What do you know about it, Josephine?’ She tossed her head about in the bed. Her skin was browner, muddier and her lips looked sore and dried. There were medicine bottles and cups and spoons on the table beside her. One of the maids brought up a tray. ‘I can’t eat,’ she said angrily. As she lay there in the long silence, the chomping began. A memory, was it, of eating?

  Aunt Josephine looked over at Edwina, a little lift of her head, of her eyebrows. That’s enough. You should go now.’

  But Edwina didn’t want to. Grandma said suddenly, ‘Bring your chair nearer,’ her voice sounding higher than usual, a little cross even but commanding still. Edwina lifted her chair. ‘Don’t scrape its legs like that. Don’t, child!’ But when Edwina sat down near her, waiting expectantly, she turned her head away, closed her eyes. ‘Josephine, read again, please.’

  ‘ “Heathcliff was hard to discover at first. If he were careless and uncared for before Catherine’s absence, he had been ten times more so since…”’

  Edwina folded her hands on her lap. The palms, cracked, had begun to itch. Between her fingers the skin was weeping. (Why did they use this word ‘weeping’? Because that was exactly what it was. Her hands wept for the piano, to make music.)

  ‘”… Therefore, not to mention his clothes, which had seen three months’ service in mire and dust, and his thick uncombed hair, the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded…”’

  ‘Is Edwina still there?’ Grandma didn’t open her eyes.

  ‘ “He might well skulk behind the settle, on beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house, instead of a rough-headed counterpart of himself, as he expected. ‘Is Heathcliff not here?’ she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors…”’

  Edwina got up to go. Grandma took no notice. She only said fretfully: ‘That bit again, Josephine, that bit again. And my food – I’ll eat my food.’

  It was so hot. All that summer it had been hot. The hottest summer she’d ever known - and the saddest. She woke every morning sad, only she didn’t know why. It wasn’t to do with the baby’s death-that was long ago now, more than three years.

  It was long ago too since Arthur’s Emily. The eldest boy was very big now, looked almost grown up. He worked in the vicarage garden. In her mind both deaths had got a little mixed up. She felt, just sad, as if something was lost.

  And of course, her piano, her music was in a way lost. Since she’d said that day, ‘I don’t want to go, I won’t go,’ nothing more had happened. Whatever good things Miss Batterhurst had had to say, she’d no doubt been too tired that day to say them to Mother.

  Mother. With her, she couldn’t do right. It was as if she’d set out along the wrong path, and Mother said only, that’s wrong, that’s wrong – but couldn’t or wouldn’t set her back on the right one.

  ‘Look at me when you speak to me.’

  ‘I was, it was just –’

  ‘Take that saucy expression, that impudent look off your face… What’s this I hear? Miss Norris says that in French –’

  ‘I want to learn Italian.’

  ‘It’s not for you to decide… Edwina, your life is mapped out for you. You don’t realize, I think, the benefits of security. To know exactly what is going to happen…’

  All right. She, Edwina, in only five or six years’ time was going to be brought out into the world and looked over. ‘When she comes out,’ they said, puzzling her. Then the next step on from that: a lot of dancing and dressing up, and waiting. You waited, she thought, and then suitably, someone said, I want to marry you. Then she would go to live in a house just like this, only she would tell Nurse What to do and Miss Norris and everybody. The Philips and the Goras and the Edwinas would appear. They would be very perfect and beautiful – she would never be nasty to them as Mother was to her. But what will I do all day? she thought suddenly.

  The feeling in the house changed, as if they’d settled down to a long siege. She heard them say: ‘She may last for weeks.’ The doctor came every day.

  While they were out riding, Arthur said: ‘You should of seen her, t’old mistress, hunting. Hedge-hopping she was, while she broke a hip. Never got over that. Seventy she’ll’ve been.’ He frowned. ‘And never good-looking. She were never a good-looking woman. Your father he takes after t’old master. Miss Josephine, too. She does an’ all.’ He smiled. ‘I reckon for a woman that’s not maybe best…’

  Arthur talked to her a lot, much more easily now. It was almost back to the old days, how it had been in the beginning. (Only: she would blush, hot colour flooding everywhere, when she remembered her visit to their house; what she had said.)

  But death wasn’t all that far away and came quite suddenly in the night.

  Edwina, that afternoon (when in the July heat she should have been learning French verbs out in the garden house) had been sitting at the bedside again. The tray today had on it a jug of lemonade, and some curd tarts, very freshly baked, sprinkled with spice. She’d wanted, nervously hungry, to ask for one.

  Aunt Josephine talked about the weather. She found it trying. ‘It’s difficult for our invalid,’ she told the vicar.

  She was still reading to Grandma from the blue leather copy of Wuthering Heights. It made Edwina think, she didn’t know why, of Uncle Frederick (two whole years now since she’d seen him). Knowing the book so well, Grandma asked only for bits of it. ‘I’ll have the part when…’ And Aunt Josephine would strive valiantly to find it. Edwina could make nothing of the story on this account.

  There was a character called Joseph. ‘ “I’d rayther, by th’ haulf, hev ‘em swearing i’ my lugs froh morn to neeght,”’ read out Aunt Josephine, ‘ “nor hearken ye hahsiver – ”’

  ‘That won’t do,’ Grandma said, suddenly coming to life. ‘You’re prissy with the accent, Josephine. Your namesake too. You never were a bonny reader.’ She wanted the account of HeathclifFs death. He had ‘a queer end’, one of the characters said. Edwina listened fascinated.

  Aunt Josephine stopped reading. Half asleep, Grandma chomped. The room smelt now. It frightened Edwina. Bath Bun, on a cushion, growled menacingly when she came near. He ate three of the curd tarts in quick succession, then he had a saucer of tea with some of the honey from the garden. Grandma, waking up, said petulantly, ‘We supported six hives, in my time.’

  In the middle of the night the
bells rang. Edwina came out of her room. Nurse tried to stop her.

  Grandma was dead, they said in the morning. Edwina went in to see her. It wasn’t like Emily. Nothing about it was like Emily. There was a great lightness about it all-and no beauty at all. The day after the funeral – as if one life ending meant another beginning – they told her about school.

  ‘You know that Clare goes to a convent? She’s very happy there. We thought…’

  It would be a strange world. It would be like a foreign country. ‘Where is it? When would I go?’ Question upon question. She irritated them. She said, inspired suddenly, ‘Can I learn the piano there?’

  ‘If you want,’ Mother said, without interest. She added: ‘It’s by the sea, by the way.’

  By the way. A school, a convent school. By the sea.

  She went with Mother into York, to buy uniform. She needed a blue serge skirt and black woollen stockings. Blue bloomers. White Peter Pan collars. Brown leather hockey boots. On and on and on. She found it impossible to imagine the life at all. She would go in September and not come home again until Christmas. Mother had been in convents in Belgium and France and gone home (often a hotel) only once a year.

  She wrote to Uncle Frederick. ‘I’m to go to school by the sea, and sleep in a dormitery. I shall be in between Whitby and Scarborough on a peak sticking out. The Romans built one of their forts there and the Danes came and put a standerd up with a black raven. Now it’s a convent with nuns and you can see the sea I think from the dormitery. I know there will be wild days and great white horses, and then I will think of you,’ she added lamely.

  She didn’t like the letter and thought of destroying it, but Mother had already sent up for it. So she folded it over and over again, smaller and smaller. She put a heart on the outside. ‘From Edwina!’

  She was taken in the motor. Mother came too. All the way there she hardly spoke to Edwina. She seemed to have her mind elsewhere. Her gloved hands lay on her lap. Her nose twitched a little. She was wearing a hat shaped like a cavalier’s with yellow silk satin round the brim; it matched her amber necklace. She looked very beautiful.

  They had sudden glimpses of the sea, then it would disappear again, tantalizingly, so that they were into the valleys. Farm after farm was laid out on the hillside like a giant map. Bracken-gathering had begun; they passed a big party, the cart going up. There was a mellow warm haze over everything. A sleepy content. She was part of it, and not part of it. She was leaving all this and yet not leaving. She wasn’t going very far from home. It would still be Yorkshire. She hadn’t even changed Ridings. Why isn’t there a South Riding? she asked insistently. Nurse had no idea, so was angry to be asked (like the day she’d asked about ‘peacock’. How to spell it. Was it anything to do with pee? Nurse had gone a fiery red). But it turned out that Riding meant a third, in the old days. Who’d decided then which three it was to be? ‘Winds,’ Aunt Josephine said. The North wind blew, the West, the East, but on no part of Yorkshire did the South wind blow. She had really concerned herself, she said, with the weather…

  But already, suddenly, we are nearly there. There’s the Home Farm, and nearby, the house where parents who came from a long way stopped: because there were girls from Ireland and South America, India even. She was glad that Mother, that no one, would have to come and see her like that.

  There were square stone gateposts but no gate. The drive was straight and not very long; elm trees stood on either side. The convent itself, dark red, enormous, spread out across the top of the cliff in the afternoon sun, while behind it, so very beautifully, so endlessly, effortlessly, the sea stretched away so still she couldn’t tell, in the heat haze, where it ended and the sky began.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely,’ she cried out. ‘Oh, but that’s lovely.’

  ‘It’s a tolerable building, I suppose,’ Mother said. She adjusted her hat. ‘I hope they give us some refreshment, some tea. In this heat.’ The tall thin woman with the pince-nez and the small mouth was Reverend Mother. They had tea in the convent parlour. Edwina knew that Clare had an aunt who was a nun here. Sitting there, on the stiff embroidered cushion, she wondered: Does Clare call her ‘Aunt’ or ‘Mother’?

  She was offered a drink-milk in a little cup instead of tea. And some small sugar cakes. Reverend Mother didn’t eat but sat, her hands folded on her lap. She and Mother paid scant attention to Edwina. The talk was of Clare, and Clare’s home; of other pupils; of people and families they both knew. Then of Mother’s schooldays.

  Her gaze wandered round the parlour. Over the fireplace was a statue of the infant Jesus in robe and crown. Ornate drawn-thread work, like Aunt Adelina did, covered the backs of the chairs. There was a piano, shut, over by the window.

  Suddenly Reverend Mother turned towards her. Her hands moved to one side of her lap. ‘Well, Edwina. Do you think you are going to be happy with us?’

  She had not thought about being happy. Happiness was, after all, what happened when you died. Here, now, it meant only something frightening perhaps which happened at the piano. She started, jumped a little as if caught in some guilty act. Reverend Mother was looking at her, head bent forward slightly, a quiet smile beginning on her lips. She had to answer, very soon. ‘I shall like it very much,’ she said sturdily. ‘And I’m going to work very hard. I’m going to study a great deal.’

  Reverend Mother seemed a little taken aback. Looking more towards Mother, she said: ‘Indeed. Of course. Study is important.’ Then to Edwina: ‘But other things are important too. As I’m sure your mother will agree. Accomplishments – so that you can fill your role socially, your place in society. God’s place for you. Accomplishments are important, because they are necessary. Study, academic study is perhaps more of a luxury. I may add that no one before, ever, has actually declared their intention of studying. Usually,’ she smiled wanly, ‘we have to persuade.’ She turned once again to Mother. ‘Girls-naturally and rightly-have other interests.’

  If she craned her head she could perhaps see out of the window, round the corner, to the gardens and cliff, the sea.

  ‘Edwina.’ Mother spoke sharply. She wore her small frown which was really a scolding.

  Edwina paid attention again. But Mother was going. Gathering up her gloves, uncrossing her ankles, patting the amber-ribboned hat. She looked suddenly young, very young. It was as if Edwina could see underneath to the girl. Mother had been to school, to strict Belgian nuns, French nuns. It was Uncle Frederick who had stayed at home, who had had tutors. She wanted to say: Mother, don’t go. In a sudden confusion of tiredness (she’d hardly slept last night) she thought for a moment that it was Mother who was to be left: to the mercies of this gentle nun with the pince-nez and the thin lips.

  ‘We shall take good care of Edwina…’

  Mother’s dry kiss at the parlour door. The warm late afternoon. The small bustling nun who appeared it seemed from nowhere and gripped her by the wrist. ‘I’ve come to take you to the girls.’

  But first she was shown up to the dormitory. Later the maids would unpack her luggage for her.

  Her bed, white curtains round it, was at the end of the long room as far away as possible from the window, and the sea. The nun, who was called Mother Cuthbert, pointed to the next-door cubicle. ‘Frances won’t be back till Wednesday, Clare of course is ill, otherwise the dormitory is full.’

  As they walked towards the door, ‘The sea,’ Edwina said, ‘can I go and look at it?’

  ‘What’s that? You call us “Mother”, please.’

  ‘The sea. Can I go down to see it, Mother.’

  ‘But not at all, we don’t go to see the sea. The girls sometimes go for a walk on the sands. With one of the younger nuns, of course, or Mademoiselle or Fräulein. It’s a steep climb down…’

  She was in the lions’ den. Brought into a room where girls, girls, girls were massed together, huddled, chattering. Mother Cuthbert said: ‘Where’s Meresia? Someone look for Meresia, please.’ The chattering stopped and then began again
. Edwina was alone, even though they seemed to crowd round her. Girls of her age, girls of all ages, girls with bosoms which could be seen pushing out of their dresses, girls with grown-up expressions and voices. A babble.

  ‘No time before supper, dears… Guess what I’ve been told -I can learn Latin… “Amo, amas, I love a lass”… You’ll never guess who’s teaching Geography… Did you know Hermione’s brother climbed the Matterhorn…’

  A girl with a lot of teeth came forward: ‘Are you new? I’m Babs,’ she said. ‘You’re lucky sleeping next to Fanny. You’ll always be in trouble, in a row. She’s fearfully naughty. Term doesn’t begin until Fanny comes.’ She introduced two other girls: ‘This is Vita and this is Madge.’

  Edwina explained about Clare: ‘I went to dancing class with her. She’s not well. She’s in Switzerland till the end of the month.’ They hadn’t known that. ‘She often looks pasty,’ Vita said.

  It was just then a big girl came in, asking: ‘Where’s Edwina?’

  ‘I’m Meresia,’ she said a moment later, smiling at Edwina. ‘I’m your guardian angel.’

  She was so beautiful, this girl who’d been asked – and seemed pleased to be asked – to watch over her. Babs explained: ‘A new little one always has a big girl to take care of her. Meresia will see to you, and show you everything.’

  She wasn’t like anyone Edwina knew; more like she imagined an angel. The navy skirt and blouse which looked so ordinary, so Aunt Josephine somehow, on the other girls, looked on her as if specially made and chosen. Her voice was a little breathless, her mouth full of something rich and warm. Fair hair in tendrils over her forehead was tied with a bow behind but clouding out. She had very long, very slim feet. She put an arm round Edwina’s shoulders. ‘I’ll show you over.’ As they went along the wide shiny corridors, their voices echoing, statues surprising her at every turn:

  The classrooms – they’re just along there… this is where your veil is, you’ll need it for chapel, after supper… the dining-room, through there…’ She turned. ‘If you have any problems, or anything worries you – you’ll come to me, won’t you? Won’t you?’