Men On White Horses

by Pamela Haines

  Edwina relaxed. It could never have been. Never could she imagine those champing jaws going up and down, up and down on the Catholic faith.

  Meresia asked: ‘Are you looking forward to going home, darling?’ Edwina said yes, and asked, was she?

  Meresia smiled, ‘Oh yes. Daddy will be home except for Christmas Eve.’ And When Edwina asked her where she lived: ‘In Warwickshire. We’re not far, you know, from Stratford – where Shakespeare came from.’ She pushed back a stray curl.

  On the last evening there were carols, and a Christmas play. They were promised roast chestnuts after. The big girls acted while the younger ones watched. Our Lady was played by an Irish girl, whose blue-black hair stuck untamed from out of her short white headdress. Meresia was the Angel Gabriel. Even the shapeless white garment (a priest’s surplice?) couldn’t spoil her beauty. The stage lights shone on her hair and the false gold band. One wing – she must have knocked it making her entrance – was slightly askew. A loud stage whisper suggested that it should be straightened. The corners of Our Lady’s mouth twitched; Meresia hunched her shoulders to hide the giggles. Behind Edwina a nun tut-tutted.

  The backcloth for the Visitation scene had been freshly painted by Meresia and another girl. It was the most beautiful scenery Edwina had ever seen. Purples, browns, soft green, and a haze going out over the hills that Mary had crossed to bring the joyful news to her cousin. And further away still – the sea. Real to her although she couldn’t smell it: just as she knew it wasn’t so far from the walls of where they sat.

  They sang The First Nowell’ and ‘Angels from the Realms of Glory.’ The chestnuts tasted of her happiness, her sudden longing to be home.

  The best time was before Christmas. After was horrid. A lot of her presents had been useful and none of them what she’d asked for. Philip had been given a penknife with all the kings and queens of England on it. He wasn’t very pleased with it. She coveted it but would never have asked him for it.

  He’d grown very tall, would be like Father perhaps, but he had a very small, very round head and an expression which was discontented and a little fretful at the same time.

  She didn’t like him really. Coming back when she’d been away, she saw him as a separate person, not just family. They were no longer all ‘family’. Once you’d been away, really away, it was never the same again.

  Indeed no one wanted really to hear about the convent. Except Nurse. Nurse surprised her not only by being very friendly but also by her insatiable curiosity about it all. ‘What do the nuns wear at night-time, in bed? Do you know, do you see?’ Edwina imagined her relating it all with relish to her sister. Superior knowledge. ‘And shifts. Do you have to wear one for the bath?’ No, Edwina explained. But Mother had had to of course, in her convents in Belgium and France.

  Mother. It wasn’t any better really. It was as if they were each in different rooms speaking to different people.

  ‘The convent. Is it any good? Do you enjoy it?’

  She hadn’t realized she was meant to enjoy it. ‘All right. It’s not too bad… ’

  ‘And the girls? You’ve made some friends?’ Under her breath: ‘For God’s sake say you’ve made some friends –’

  There’s Fanny.’ She said rashly, ‘I like Fanny the best. She’s the most interesting –’

  ‘Ah, but does she like you the best?’ Her mother shrugged her shoulders.

  Edwina flushed. She thought, I’ll refuse to answer that one. Let her think what she likes.

  New Year’s Day, 1912 now, was fine and bright and mild like an April day. Mother went out hunting; Cora went too and was blooded. Edwina would have gone except that she had a bad cold. But it meant that in the evening Mother was in a good mood and when she was called in to see her she decided to ask straight out for what she wanted.

  Mother was lying back in a loose grey robe with big pink roses on it, sipping lemon tea and smoking, flat strong-smelling cigarettes.

  ‘Can I have piano lessons?’

  ‘What, here, now, in the holidays?’ She arched her eyebrows.

  ‘No, I mean at the convent. Like I have dancing lessons.’

  ‘But Edwina-you were so trying when you had them before.’

  ‘She wasn’t any good –’

  ‘You weren’t any good. Those terrible noises you make which Frederick, dear Frederick, says are so special – they won’t do. One has to practise scales, arpeggios –’

  ‘But I do. I would.’

  Her mother had lost interest ‘I don’t see why not. If you want.’ She shrugged her shoulders again: ‘After all it is an accomplishment. Just, please, don’t bang –’

  ‘Then I’ll just do tinkly tunes when I think you’re listening.’

  ‘Edwina!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I should hope you are. When I’ve just said yes there’s surely no need for sarcasm.’ She paused. ‘Your trouble is that you take everything au sérieux. Perhaps I can put it another way? If you could just remember-for heaven’s sake – that music isn’t serious.’

  So she could learn. Oh thank God, thank Uncle Frederick, thank Our Lady who surely now would be in the practice cubicle with her. Thank them all. Thank you.

  ‘Edwina, come back, please. I can’t bear the way you stand. It’s so – squat. That’s the only word for it. You don’t have to stand square all the time as if you were about to fight someone. And your hands. They’re all thrusting, as if, as if – Anyway, I must say they look quite unsuitable for playing the piano. They’re working hands.’ She said it with surprise and discovery almost: ‘They’re working hands. No, keep away from me with that cold. Look at Frederick’s hands. Frederick’s. They’re so long. And so thin, the fingers so thin…’

  Her cold was nearly better but she had a head, a nose so cotton-wool-filled that she could hardly breathe or think. She went out into the garden. It was mild still. The birds were deceived and thought it was spring. As she stood in sight of Mr Ramsden’s cottage, looking through to the broken gateway, she could hear them singing. Hedge-sparrows, a robin, hopping, rustling. There was a fine tracery of bare branches, the sun behind them. Her thick muffler hid her mouth so that she could breathe only with difficulty.

  A sudden shaft of sunlight illumined the gateway, the trees beyond. Meresia stood there smiling – and was gone.

  She was sure that she’d seen her, the light haloed about her hair, a golden aureole. ‘Come back,’ she said out loud.

  And then felt stupid and silly. ‘Come back,’ she said again. But not unhappily. Meresia of course hadn’t been there. A trick of light. Something in her mind. But oh, she was happy. So happy, because in seeing her that moment, she knew that she loved her.

  Come back. Oh Meresia, come back. I love you.

  Everyone seemed nicer in a way that second term. Madge appeared almost glad to see her. Fanny actually was. And even Clare gave her some sort of welcome. Perhaps it was that they were all fellow sufferers?

  There was a new girl in their class: Annette, tall with freckles and lank hair. She’d just come from India where her father was in the Army and she was rather shy and homesick. She was in trouble almost immediately. She had brought with her several books; one of them was Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince. Mother Bede, who was in charge of the library, said: ‘I shall have to confiscate this. I think perhaps your parents – ?’

  ‘But they’re only fairy stories,’ said Annette, her lower lip trembling.

  ‘I want nothing by that man in this convent.’

  Mother Anselm, who was standing by, chipped in to say that Annette mustn’t argue. Nor should she interrupt. The book was removed.

  ‘What about Oscar Wilde?’ Madge asked. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  Nor had Edwina. ‘He wrote witty plays, I think,’ said Clare.

  ‘But what was wrong? Didn’t he believe in God or something?’

  ‘Of course he did, he was Irish,’ said Clare.

  ‘Actually, I know all about it,’
Fanny said quietly. ‘He dressed up as a woman. You’re not allowed to, by the law. Unless it’s a play or a fancy dress or something. They sent him to prison. That’s why they won’t let us have the book, because he went to prison.’

  ‘How awful,’ Vita said. To go to prison.’

  Fanny seemed different this term. Edwina didn’t know why except that she looked older and at the same time more accessible. Like the sister she would have liked?

  The weather was cold again. Her fingers in the frosty January air tingled with the excitement of playing the piano again. Tingled with the salt in the air, from the sea – the first thing she’d looked for when she got back. Lying in her cubicle the first night, thinking of it just outside the windows, the tide up, rushing against the cliff. Her soul could escape whenever she wanted.

  It was a new year. Anything could happen, everything would happen, if only because she loved Meresia – and was to learn the piano again.

  She had become afraid to speak to Meresia, yet it didn’t matter. There was always time. It was enough to look at her, to watch her. I could be her guardian angel, she thought, if only I were asked, if only I were older. O my love my dove’ my beautiful one. When she heard that, when they were reading from the scriptures, she thought of Meresia’s bosom, that it was soft like a dove’s. It could be seen rising and falling beneath the school blouse, a downy softness. Breasts. They were called breasts. She had never seen any, imagining them growing like angel’s wings on to the small nodules, the pimples which she could feel beneath her nightdress, saw when she lay in the bath. Nothing would come of them. Nothing could.

  Madge was jealous that Fanny and Edwina were friends. She said to Edwina, ‘Fanny only makes a fuss of people for a while. She won’t want to know you next term.’ She sneezed several times in succession.

  There was some sort of fever running through the school. Annette was the first to go to the Infirmary, then Madge. It appeared that Mr Maycock (Osbert) had it too, so that her first piano lesson was postponed. Her hands flared up and she had to go to Mother Infirmarían where she was given some sticky ointment and an acid drop.

  Perhaps she had had to wait too long for the lesson, perhaps it was just that she was sickening for ‘flu herself, but when the longed-for day came – it was all wrong.

  I do not like thee, Doctor Fell. It upset her from the start that he should look so like Cecil and yet not be him. The only difference was that Osbert wore a little goatee beard. The resemblance gave her a shock even though it was expected. She was a little frightened of him too, because Fanny had said the day before: ‘It’s very odd they don’t have a “dragon” here. Other schools do. My cousin does. There ought to be Mother Somebody or other, sitting there. It’s in case he leaps on you…’

  He looked her up and down. ‘And well – how are we? I do hope we’re going to like each other.’

  ‘It makes me feel very funny,’ she said boldly, ‘you looking so like – ‘

  ‘How odd if we didn’t.’ His voice was a lot deeper. That made her feel funny too.

  ‘Don’t stare so,’ he said after a moment, irritably almost. Then smiling – he seemed able to turn his smiles on and off very easily: ‘I think perhaps, although you are quite the young lady, we could dispense with Miss Illingworth and call you by the name your parents chose so specially for you. And what was that?’

  ‘Edwina.’

  ‘Edwina. How beautiful. I compose sometimes,’ he said. ‘Nothing ambitious of course, nothing for the halls of fame. But I can think already of a little piece entitled “Edwina”. It might go a little like this –’ He played a few tentative notes then, as if rubbing them out, began again, then stopped abruptly.

  ‘Some have been published, as a matter of fact. Privately, naturally. But with a dedication to all you lovely little girls. He smiled again, only not with his eyes. ‘But revenons à nos moutons, as the French say. Play for me, Edwina.’

  He nodded approvingly, his lips pursed together. ‘We have had lessons before, I understand?’ When she had finished, ‘Quite strong little hands,’ he said, lifting the one nearest to him, then dropping it quickly. ‘What have we here? Is it catching?’

  ‘It’s eczema,’ she said angrily, staring at his crinkly hair. ‘I just get it. Sometimes I wear bandages and a lot of cream. But not when I’m playing –’

  ‘How disfiguring,’ he said. He looked away. Then he turned and pinched her cheek, playfully almost. ‘No trouble though with your maidenly soft cheek and brow? Except that little frown. I don’t like that little frown.’

  ‘It’s when I’m concentrating.’

  ‘Shall we – a little détente perhaps? We put too much into our playing. That Scarlatti was only a little show-me piece for your teacher, and he can see that you’re going to be very good – don’t spoil it all by being earnest.’

  It was Mother all over again. She was so angry that when he said, ‘Let me hear some Scales. Do you know – B minor?’ she attacked it with a sort of furious gusto and played two others he hadn’t asked for.

  ‘Oh, you dear little Roman Catholic girls,’ he said. ‘Really. You are all very dear.’

  The minutes were running away. She felt that she hadn’t started. He asked her to sight-read. It was a piece in six-eight time, the composer not marked. She surprised herself at how easily her eyes raced ahead of her fingers. She felt far away, flying, forgot she was with him. ‘Turn the page,’ she said in a commanding little voice, suddenly catching sight of him sitting there.

  ‘We have heard enough, I think.’ She felt like screaming. It was the most terrible feeling to be stopped like that, at that moment. Her stomach knotted.

  ‘Nice supple little fingers, ah yes, nice tone.’ He reached for a pile of music on top of the piano. ‘We shall have to stop soon.’ Figures passed the frosted glass of the door. It must be change-of-class time already. ‘I have to be careful not to tire myself,’ he said. ‘It has been quite a debilitating illness.’

  He set her a lot of work. She could feel his eyes on her and didn’t like them.

  ‘Perhaps you’re the sort of young lady who likes to choose for herself what she’ll play, what she’ll practise, eh?

  ‘No answer. That means of course that you are. We shall have to see about that – shan’t we, Edwina?’

  Fanny, Fanny, Fanny. She was Fanny’s friend. Fanny’s equal. Although she wasn’t always absolutely sure that she liked her, looking sometimes at that small cat-like face, the way her mouth curled, the pale skin and the brilliant slash of auburn which was her hair.

  It was Fanny who said, one of those understaffed evenings (several of the nuns and big girls were ill too): ‘Who’ll dare me to run absolutely stark naked from one end of the dorm to the other?’

  ‘I dare you, Frances Perrott…’ Edwina came out of her cubicle and said, what about her?

  ‘I dare you, Edwina Illingworth…’ She did it too, only she kept her navy blue knickers on so that she only got half the bet. She thought she would die of terror. Certainly she could be expelled, might be expelled. They all peeped out and watched Fanny: once round and back. She looked strange, something from the woods, her hair flying, her bottom very pink.

  Because they couldn’t be supervised as much as usual, they told stories after lights out.

  Fanny was first. Hers was smugglers, in Robin Hood’s Bay. ‘One wet and windy night… these smugglers were escaping the Excisemen and this house had tunnels underground, you could pass the casks of rum and things along through to other houses…’ The story was very long, with appropriate noises. Outside the dormitory a real salt wind lashed the windows. ‘… but then the two smugglers got into a fight and the big black-haired one killed the other down there underneath my grandfather’s house… and now, every 17th March, if you’re sitting there at half past eleven at night you can hear it happen, all over again…’

  How spooky, and only a few miles from where they lay. They shivered with enjoyment. ‘I made it up,’ Fanny told Edwina l
ater. ‘From some things I read.’

  But for Edwina it was Glare’s story which was the frightening one. Because it was true. Clare’s brother at Ample-forth ‘had told it to her. It had actually happened to a boy there.

  ‘His name was Michael and he’d committed this Mortal Sin. He’d had plenty of chance to go to Confession because they had it every week but he was frightened to, although of course he should have realized it was God he’d be telling it to and not the priest in the Box. Anyway, in the middle of the night one of the other boys woke up and he saw Something Black sitting at the end of Michael’s bed.’ She paused. ‘He could even hear it breathing –’ She warmed to her story. ‘Next week’s Confessions, and Michael still didn’t go. That night, the Black Thing was halfway up the bed…’

  Edwina pulled the bedclothes over her head, then remembered that it was her turn to keep ‘cave’. In the evenings the nuns usually wore soft slippers.

  ‘… and the next week the same – so the boy decided to tell Michael about the Black Thing. But Michael just said, ‘You must have imagined it’ and went very red in the face. The Black Thing came again, only this time his friend saw it move – nearer and nearer and nearer and nearer till it was right over Michael! His friend screamed and screamed. Lots of monks came running in. But Michael was dead – and the Black Thing gone…’

  ‘Oh Clare,’ Babs said, ‘honestly.’ Annette, her first night back in the dormitory, had begun to cry quietly. Fanny asked in her clear cold little voice, ‘What was the sin that he committed?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Clare said indignantly. She added righteously: ‘What’s it matter what it was, if it’s a Mortal Sin?’

  The Devil was real. ‘The little devil’, people said when someone was a little naughty, but really it was serious. Evil, devil, evil, was all about us – the Devil was scheming, doing his utmost to get everyone. Struggling for every soul. He had so much power, so much, that lying in wait he might yet make a nonsense of everything, of all the beauty, of all the possibles, of all she felt pulsing inside – her certainty that she would win. I will and I will and I will, she would say over and over to herself, not even certain what she meant. Life, death, tripping you up over something so small. Mortal sins, fish eaten deliberately on a Friday, Mass missed on Sunday…