But you could turn to Our Lady. Pray to her that she might save you. Salve Regina, Star of the Sea, Respice Stellam. But even as she rested in this she heard the voice of Mother Anselm yesterday, stopping Fanny who had been telling them about the boys at Whitby on the harbour wall: ‘This is how they walk, this is how they whistle –’
‘Frances, please! Kindly remember, when a young girl whistles, Our Lady turns her back.’
She had thought being in the Infirmary would be fun: it had looked attractive and cosy one time she had peeped in. But she hadn’t reckoned with feeling ill. She ached so in every bone and was so dry and thirsty and slightly sick all the time. There was a Scotch girl, Jean, in there with her – one of the big girls. She called Edwina ‘pet’ and lent her two books and an illustrated magazine. Her eyes ached too much to read at first but when she felt a little better she looked at the magazine and read all about the Titanic which was so big that it could carry as many people as lived in a small town. There were photographs, drawings, descriptions. She was transported.
But in the evenings her temperature would go up. The fourth night she dreamed that she and Meresia were the only survivors of a shipwreck. It was the ship she’d read about but it had on it only everybody from the convent. All, all were lost and although it happened in the Bay they were washed up on some desert island. It was hot, so hot. They had a little fresh water. She was gasping for it but there was only enough for one. ‘You have it, Meresia. It doesn’t matter if I die. I can always go to Heaven. Meresia, drink it, please drink it.’ Meresia, weak and only half alive, drank it and she rewarded Edwina with the most wonderful smile. When she spoke though she had Jean’s voice. Thank you, pet. Come nearer, pet, so that I can kiss you.’
‘Have you heard of the Curse?’ Fanny asked, climbing up one of the hillocks. They had escaped to Switzerland. ‘Periods. About your thirteenth birthday they put some towels under the mattress. Gabrielle got the giggles when she found hers.’
Edwina thought she would put off bothering about what it was until the summer. ‘Just ask me if you don’t know anything,’ Fanny said. She pulled Edwina’s tammy back off her forehead. Edwina pulled it down again and snatched Fanny’s right off. ‘If you’re clever,’ Fanny said, ‘you can feel not very well and get breakfast in bed. You just have to say to Mother Infirmarian, “I’ve got my bad time.”’
She seemed obsessed with the idea. Over the next week or two she kept pointing to various big girls then saying behind her hand to Edwina: ‘She’s awfully pale. Perhaps she’s got her Period.’ One day she showed Edwina the chute where the used towels went. There was no one in the cloakroom at the time. ‘That’s where you put them to be washed. Ugh.’
‘What about the nuns?’ Edwina asked, thinking out loud.
‘They don’t have Periods,’ Fanny said. ‘You are ignorant. Periods are to do with having babies. If you don’t have a baby when it’s time to they just stop. It’s a very big subject.’ She bit her thumbnail. ‘Can you come and stay with me at Easter? Write on Sunday and ask them –’
The meal gong went. Edwina made a rush for the door. ‘Bags I a seat near the pipes…’
They went into Retreat just before the end of term. It was only for a few days but it meant no piano lesson. Although she still didn’t like Mr Maycock she was so quietly, so deeply happy to be playing once more. Scarcely a twinge of homesickness all the term. Fanny couldn’t understand why she watched the clock, anxiously waiting for practice time to arrive. Ten minutes with the set work, then twenty blissful, terribly short ones with any Mozart sonata from the pale blue bound volumes she’d found tucked away in the library (bequeathed perhaps by some nun on entering?).
A Retreat. She was frightened that perhaps, some time in the silence, in the sermons, she might receive a Vocation. For it didn’t matter whether you wanted one or not. Mother Edward had confided to them that she had received hers like that. It was the perfect setting for God to speak.
But if He were to speak then He would have to raise His voice above Fanny’s. She spoke everywhere. In every nook and cranny, whenever there was a chance to whisper anything. Mostly they talked in the lavatories, standing on the seat, leaning over the partitions, keeping cave for big girls who might report them. That Retreat they needed – however many times was it? – to be excused.
They were meant to read a lot of the time. Fanny had a book about Catherine Labouré and the Miraculous Medal and Edwina was reading Thérèse of the Infant Jesus’s Story of a Soul. The second day an unexpected spell of fine weather began and they were able to walk about the grounds with their books. There was one place a little nearer than Switzerland called Montmartre. It was a short avenue of trees and they walked up and down this, clutching their volumes, heads bent, hoping they looked like nuns reading their breviaries.
In fact Fanny had a new obsession. They both had. Edwina had given her the magazine with the Titanic in it and she had read it enthralled. It was the stuff of great imaginings.
They played a game, walking up and down Montmartre: ‘By the way,’ Fanny said, ‘I have a thousand pounds to spare. I think I’ll probably reserve my own suite and private promenade deck.’
‘I’m 883 feet long,’ Edwina said, ‘92.5 feet wide and I can do 22.5 knots. I’m bigger than the Kaiser Wilhelm –’
Fanny said: ‘I shall take one of the private decks with Elizabethan half-timbered walls.’
Edwina: ‘Five hundred and fifty people can dine in my first-class saloon and I have climbing plants on the verandah of my mahogany-panelled smoke-room.’
Fanny: ‘I think I’ll have my luncheon in the Café Parisién – no, on second thoughts I feel like a Turkish bath. Or shall I go in the gym, or play racquets, or shall I take a swim?’
Edwina: ‘My reading- and writing-room has a great bow window. You can see the sea and the sky –’
‘It says here in this advertisement,’ Fanny said, ‘that all the first-class passengers have Vinolia Otto soap. What do you think the others have?’
‘Watch out,’ Edwina said, ‘Mother Anselm. Coming in to starboard.’
She fell in love with Whitby, and Fanny’s house. But first of all with Whitby. Ever since she’d had permission to go, she could think only: I shall be able to have as much sea as I want. However much she loved, and had loved from the first day, the view from the convent gardens, the great wide sweep of the bay, the changing sky, the gulls wheeling by as she walked through the cloisters from the classrooms catching her breath in the sudden salt breeze – the sea had never been near enough.
Now she would be able to walk on the sands without her gloves, perhaps with her shoes off even? Stay till the last minutes for the tide, walk far far out When it had nearly disappeared.
Whitby. Skinner Street, Church Street, Sandgate, Grape Lane, Boulby Bank, Spital Bridge, Baxtergate, Flowergate – All that first afternoon she made Fanny walk about everywhere, homing back always to the harbours, to the sea. Fanny only wanted to go to the Westcliff Café for an ice. She grumbled: ‘I think you’re quite assy. I wish I hadn’t invited you.’
And then Fanny’s house. It seemed, after the Hall, so welcoming and small, standing half hidden by foliage, there in the terrace. Blossom was out on the trees, the front garden frothy with it, green leaves everywhere, and sunshine all that first day. So many steps to the tall house: Fanny skipped up them. ‘Home, home,’ she said. ‘My home.’ Proprietary.
Marmee (’It’s after Little Women,’ Fanny had explained) was greyer than she’d expected. Greyer even than Aunt Josephine. And silent too, although she was very welcoming. At tea, once or twice when she’d made a remark, she’d hold her head, run her hand over her forehead, push back a wisp of hair and ask: ‘What did I say?’ She seemed to go to some place not inside herself but far far away. Only it couldn’t have been a fruitful journey because she came back none the better, but rather as if she’d lost something. Often she watched Fanny anxiously, protectively almost. She wore glasses, and taking them of
f to clean them she said to Edwina: ‘If you are really interested in Whitby, our son has a fine set of prints in his room.’
‘Oh, those,’ Fanny said, wanting Edwina to hurry and come upstairs with her. She wanted to show her everything with possessive pride. Edwina had a room of her own: she had thought she would have to share with Fanny but their rooms adjoined – hers had been a night nursery once. To reach it you went down some steps. There was also a bathroom all to themselves with a big geyser. ‘Don’t you know how to work them?’ Fanny asked.
They sat curled up together on the bed and talked and played Fanny’s gramophone. Mostly the same record, ‘Lily of Laguna’, because she’d only just got it, but also there were two Irish songs, one jolly and one sad, sung by John McCormack.
Mr Perrott was even older than his wife but very jolly with it and not grey at all. Some people never did grey, Fanny told her. With him it was a family thing and since he hadn’t by sixty he never would; although that wouldn’t help her, she said, being adopted.
‘He may tease you,’ she’d warned. ‘It just depends.’
Edwina wondered what it depended on. But he said to her only, looking at her closely after shaking hands: ‘I’d expected a large girl. Fanny wrote us and the way she described you – we’d expected a large girl.’ He lifted his eyebrows in query.
What was she expected to answer to that? She said defensively: ‘I was bigger when I was eight, than my sister who’s eight is now –’
‘Best goods come in little parcels,’ he said, patting her head.
They were both allowed downstairs for the evening meal. Fanny had a green velvet band round her hair. Herbert, her brother, wore glasses like his mother and had some of her manner, together with a slight stammer and a snub nose. His brown hair had an auburn tinge.
Treacle, brown gold, shone on the pudding. There were raisins inside. It seemed to Edwina the most perfect meal. The most perfect evening. She knew she would be happy, that she could let herself be happy, for a whole week. She and Fanny drank some of the wine, watered down. Mr Perrott said, This is a kind of celebration. We love to entertain Fanny’s friends.’ Herbert and Marmee echoed that. The taste of the wine reminded Edwina of something. The ghost perhaps of Uncle Frederick? The smell of his breath as he carried her late upstairs. She longed suddenly for Meresia’s presence. It needed only Meresia sitting across the table to make everything perfect.
‘Fanny,’ Herbert had asked, ‘are you going over to Bay?’
‘Of course. And Edwina.’ She turned to her father: ‘Edwina can come, can’t she?’
‘But yes.’ He had put on little steel-rimmed glasses to pick the bones from his fish. ‘But yes.’ He looked over his glasses at Edwina. ‘You’ve never been to Robin Hood’s Bay? You know you could almost cast a stone there from the convent windows. Have you tried? It looks its best in the spring-I think. Fan, you ought to take some colours along.’ He said to Edwina: ‘She really has quite a knack with a pencil and brush. What are your talents?’
‘I think,’ Edwina said, because it sounded better than ‘I know’, ‘I think I’m very good at the piano.’
‘She can play for us after the meal,’ Marmee said.
Herbert said, ‘We can have a musical hour.’ It turned out that he sang very well. Marmee accompanied him in ‘Pale Hands I Loved’, which Edwina found very sad but which made Fanny restless and giggly. Then he and his father sang a duet from Gilbert and Sullivan, ‘A Policeman’s Lot is Not an ‘Appy One’. Edwina joined in the chorus. She hoped they were not going to forget to ask her to play.
‘And now, Edwina,’ Herbert said, escorting Marmee away from the piano. She got up at once and crossing over to the stool, turned and gave a little bow. ‘Sonata in C, K.330 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.’ Fanny tittered. But far away; another time, another place.
She played. Her fingers remembered with ease. They forgot only that there was an audience. At first she played simply, sitting very upright on the stool: a small gift to them for her happy evening, holding everything back a little so that it was precise and grateful. Tilt of the wrists, arch of the fingers, the happy hours with the blue album. And then the hunger began. Her hands first, her arms, her shoulders, then rising, growing from her chest to her heart. She had become all music. She need never stop, must never stop. Purely happy, why do I ever do anything else? she thought.
A pause. The first movement over, triumphantly. The second movement – but they had all begun to clap, Fanny the loudest. Her father had come over to congratulate Edwina, hand on shoulder, a pat on the head. ‘There’s a good little girl.’ From behind, Herbert said, clapping again, ‘You played really well.’
‘But there’s more, lots more –’
She was not meant to continue. It was like cold water, the realization. They had thought that was her ‘piece’. The feeling was terrible, terrible.
‘We shall certainly hear it then. You must certainly play again.’ Another pat on the head. Final. But the hunger was still there, gnawing.
‘ “Caedmon’s cross but that’s no reason why you should be,” ‘ Fanny said, standing in the doorway of Edwina’s room.
‘“Smoke Telfer’s PickTwist and you’ll be all right”,’ Edwina said tiredly, finishing off the advertisement. Fanny picked up a magazine from the table. ‘Do you like everybody?’ she asked.
‘Very much.’
‘It’s funny, when you think they’re not my real parents –’
‘I think you look a bit like Herbert, actually,’ Edwina said. The thought had struck her while he was singing.
‘Oh, perhaps,’ Fanny said. ‘They say that’s the funny thing about being adopted. It even happens with animals. You know, people and their dogs –’
‘It happened with Bath Bun,’ Edwina began.
‘I say,’ Fanny read out: ‘This woman – she’s an American millionaire’s wife – she says she spends eight thousand a year on clothes. My dear, can you imagine? I’ll bet she looks like a war horse.’
‘We ought to go to bed,’ Edwina said, yawning. ‘Race you to get undressed –’
‘After my Turkish bath,’ Fanny said, stretching and yawning too, ‘I shall go into the cooling room – Wait a minute till I remember it right – yes, Bronze Arab lamps hang from the ceiling, the stanchions are carved with intricate Moorish patterns. Wait a bit –’
Taking her up, Edwina said: ‘Five hundred and fifty guests can dine in my first-class dining-saloon. The menu –’
Fanny said, interrupting too: ‘It doesn’t mention the other classes. Do you think they get any dinner?’
Such happy days. She bored Fanny with her love of the town, her love of the harbours. One morning she got up at five and crept out, unbolting the door like a thief, breath held. For a couple of hours she walked about, content to do just that. Climbing the hundred-and-ninety-nine steps to the Norman Church – square, grey, hazy in the pale early light – going slowly, savouring the sight of the roofless Abbey, its sandstone arches appearing out of the mist. Up and up till as the haze cleared She could turn and see below the red-roofed town. In the churchyard she looked at Caedmon’s Cross, wandered round idly reading the tombstones. Then the Abbey again, and out, out over the steel grey water. ‘Lost at sea’. She thought of Fanny’s father. Walking down the steps again, she thought too of Fanny’s mother. What was it like, not to have your baby die, but to die yourself?
She was back in by seven and only met one of the maids. Fanny was half awake, rubbing her eyes. ‘Oh, go back to Brazil where the nuts come from,’ she said.
‘Can I see your prints?’ she asked Herbert, wishing someone so pleasant was her brother instead of Philip. He was delighted to show her. There were twelve of them, all round the room. Fanny stood behind Edwina and yawned. ‘If you don’t want to see them again, get away.’ He was friendly but firm.
Walking round, he pointed them all out. There was Whitby Theatre on fire nearly a hundred years ago. The old drawbridge over the Esk – ships used to
be tied to its timbers, he said. Then the swivel bridge which came after, packed with carts and carriages. The Abbey, looking quite different, complete with a big central Tower and its great West window. The salvage of a coal boat: she liked that one the best of all. The painter had signed his name on the stern of the wrecked boat.
Herbert gave her a pile of writing paper, headed with yet more views. She thought at once that she would write to Uncle Frederick on it, imagining him already reading the long letter, thinking of her, forgetting Aunt Adelina.
Fanny yawned again. ‘I can draw better than that. I can draw just as well as I want. So.’
They were to go by train. Cook, Mrs Ibbotson, would take them as she had a friend in Bay. The excitement: Edwina had never been on a train before.
Although it wasn’t a very hot afternoon, Cook panted and puffed climbing up into the carriage, mopping her brow as soon as they’d sat down: ‘I hope you girls aren’t going to talk and jump about all the way.’
‘She’s not really Mrs,’ Fanny had explained earlier. They’re just called that out of politeness. No one would really marry anybody so fat and ugly.’ She was in a showing-off mood and talked most of the time just to irritate Cook; putting her head out of the carriage window when she’d been told not to. ‘This time ten days where shall we be? Back in that horrid nunnery. Lots of spiders in my bath trying hard to make me laugh…’
Men On White Horses Page 11
