Then suddenly it was written: Robin Hood’s Bay. And Fanny, jumping out first, said: ‘It’s miles to the village.’
Cook said: ‘I’m surprised, I’m sure, your auntie doesn’t send the cart up to meet us.’ She was puffed already before setting out on the long walk down the hill. The sun had come out now and she screwed her eyes up against it. They came past the Victoria Hotel and soon after there was a stretch of open land on the cliff top. The convent stood out, clear in the afternoon light, across the wide sweep of the bay. Edwina wanted to stand there for a few moments but Fanny had already run on ahead. She was left with Cook – who grumbled. It was something about a tradesman. The pork wasn’t what it should have been. ‘I know it’s no concern of yours,’ she told Edwina, ‘but folk have to tell someone.’
A horse and cart passed them in the street, the horse pushing his head up against the sun. They’d passed the house of Cook’s friend now, but she would come back. Fanny wanted to go right on down to the sweet shop, near the water. That exasperated Cook more: ‘You can’t arrive at your auntie’s all sticky-mouthed.’ Edwina too was getting angry with her.
Then they turned up a little lane off the main street and Fanny, ahead once more, knocked at the second house. A small dark boy answered, wearing braces over his shirt, his trousers a little too big; long black stockings, wrinkled. ‘Mam – it’s them!’
A voice came from the back. ‘She’s in wash kitchen,’ the little boy said. He stood, half smiling, half scowling, looking down at the polished step. ‘Well, let us in,’ Cook said crossly.
‘Jack, didn’t you fetch them in?’ Fanny’s aunt, opening the door wider, standing there smiling, pulling at her black apron: ‘Come on, then. Mrs Ibbotson. Fanny.’ Fanny darted forward and kissed her. She coloured. Like Jack she was dark: he had her big eyes, pale skin drawn tight over the cheekbones.
Fanny said: This is my friend from school – Edwina Illingworth.’ Inside there was a fire and two or three chairs drawn up to it. Auntie, who was called Mrs Mitcham, said to Cook, ‘A cup of tea, Mrs Ibbotson?’ But Cook shook her head. ‘I’ll be away up to Jane’s.’
‘Ben’ll come for you then, when it’s time for the girls.’ She sat down heavily, tiredly. ‘Now, Fanny?’ She laid her thin hands in her lap.’Now then?’
Fanny began to prattle. There was no other word for it. A lot of it was swanking. She talked about school mostly: a paper chase, the latest dares, her drawing lessons. She included Edwina in her account. But it was all exaggerated, more than life-size. She seemed perfectly at home though. It was Edwina who felt stiff. She stared hard at the kettle, gleaming black on the hob, coming up now to the boil. Jack was standing behind his mother. His eyes darted from Fanny to Edwina. She smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.
Auntie made the tea. Half amused at Fanny’s tales, half mocking, it seemed. Fanny talked on, her legs pushed out straight towards the fire. Her aunt watched her face closely all the time.
They ate some little cakes with blobs of jam on the top. Jack kept darting from behind Edwina’s chair to snatch another. ‘They’re a treat for him,’ Auntie said. She asked Edwina about herself. Fanny seemed to remember then to ask after the rest of her family. There was an Uncle James, she’d told Edwina, who was married to Auntie and didn’t talk much, and a cousin Ben who lived a little way on down, another cousin Robert who always came along to see her. And Grandad.
Auntie said now: ‘You never asked after Mercy.’ Fanny said hurriedly, ‘Well?’ and Auntie said, ‘I’ll fetch her down.’ Edwina asked Jack then if he liked having a little sister, but he just scowled. Fanny said, ‘Of course he does. Everyone wants a sister.’
Mercy had damp curly dark hair and red sleep-flushed cheeks. Fanny played with her for a while, pulling at her fingers, then tiring suddenly, passed her to Edwina. Edwina was surprised at how warm she was: so Emily must have been.
Fanny asked: ‘Can we go out in the village?’ Jack said then, ‘Can I come too, Mam?’ Once out, he skipped ahead of them, running back every few yards. Edwina felt they were an odd trio. In some ways it was like a procession: Fanny kept looking around her as if she were someone of importance. She said to Edwina, ‘When people see me, I expect they say things like –’Oh, there’s Annie Mitcham’s little niece going by – ” ’
They were nearing the sweet shop. Jack skipped backwards: ‘Fanny, you got summat for me?’ He put out his hand. Fanny took a penny from her drawstring purse.
Edwina stood still, down in the Dock, looking all around her: up back at King Street which she hadn’t visited yet, imagining delightedly all the little lanes, passages, which must lead off it – many of them maybe with their own surprise view of the sea. Then she turned, and stared out over the water. The sight of the convent gave her a shock. She couldn’t believe: it looked so near.
‘You can walk it easily,’ Fanny said, ‘when the tide’s down. Or along the cliffs, if you’re careful –’
Inside the sweet shop the woman serving seemed to know Fanny. Two small children came through from the back and crept behind her skirts. ‘It’s Fanny,’ she told them and then: ‘What time are you away? Will you see the boats?’ She gave Jack his penny-luck bag. She told Fanny: ‘Ben goes out with the men now. Sin’ New Year he’s been.’
Fanny said to Edwina: ‘Don’t get too near.’ They were standing at the Wayfoot, the narrow slipway leading to where the fishing cobles were launched. The tide was coming up and every now and then a wave rose higher than the rest, surprising them. Edwina just stood there and got her boots wet. ‘What a mess you look,’ Fanny told her. ‘I doubt you’ll get them dry before the catch comes in.’ She began walking up again. ‘You’ve never seen it rough,’ she said. ‘You’d be frightened.’ ‘Speak for yourself,’ Edwina said, but Fanny affected not to hear and just walked on. As they passed the fish shop on their left, she said, ‘Last summer when I was here early in the day they let me do skeining. So there.’
‘So there, what?’ Edwina had had enough. But Fanny turned on her her full scorn. ‘Skeining mussels, of course. Bait, for bait, ignoramus.’
‘You sound like Philip,’ Edwina said angrily. ‘You sound like my brother, like boys do –’ She followed her sulkily up the steep road.
Auntie put her boots to dry, and lent her stockings and some waders which were much too big. Dressed like that she watched the catch, although she’d missed the first sight of the cobles, brown-sailed, coming into view.
Fish, there seemed to be fish everywhere. It was more exciting than when she’d watched on the quay at Whitby. Here she was part of it, even if that meant listening to Fanny’s superior explanations. (’Threepence a pound for that, I should think…’) The men she couldn’t sort one from the other: what wasn’t covered by sou’westers, or beards, was all voluminous oilskins, and legs lost in great leather thigh boots. But later, When they were all back at Auntie’s, it was suddenly all very simple. The room full of them, changed and washed and come to see Fanny: individuals.
Grandad came in with Uncle James. He was very big and you could see too that he was Auntie’s father by the way his eyes were set. The nose was more beaked though, and he had this lovely beard, so thick, so luxuriant: the best she’d ever seen.
Uncle James, who was just as quiet as Fanny had said, sat without saying anything very much at all, just tickling Jack and making him excited so that Auntie in the end spoke sharply. Grandad said to let him be. He had his hands to the fire and Edwina looked at them fascinated: the hair grew as thick there too as she’d ever seen. Hands, she thought, I shall always be looking at hands. Hands make music.
But now they were greeting Robert. Fanny jumped up to rush and hug him, pulling on his neck. He was as fair as all the others seemed dark. And tall, big. When he’d sat down on the cushioned squab under the window and Fanny had come and sat beside him, Jack, restless, came over and tugged at him.
It was then that Ben came in. (’He’s my cousin too,’ Fanny had said, ‘but another family. I
have a lot of relations, you see. Almost everybody here, almost everybody in Bay is related to me.’) For a moment he stood in the doorway, frowning a little. His brows met nearly in the middle. He wasn’t very old, only perhaps a couple of years on from her – not like Robert who looked about twenty – and not very tall: taller than her, just. But it was when he came right into the room, crossing over towards the fireplace, to where Grandad sat on one side – it was then she noticed. Oh, she thought, oh, but he walks just like me.
She recognized it at once. It was a way of moving so that she knew exactly how he felt: it feels, she thought, as if 7 were walking. A great sudden wave of kinship so strong that when he was shown her, when Fanny repeated, That’s my cousin,’ she said almost, very very nearly came out with: ‘and mine too.’
Fanny had sat herself on Grandad’s knee now. Ben sat, legs a little apart, Mercy in his arms, up and down, bobbing, plunging: ‘This is the way the gentlemen ride, eh?’
There was some question of when they ought to go. ‘You’ll take a bite?’ Someone would have to go up and tell Cook. Fanny said, ‘She likes to stay on talking to Jane. No one’ll worry if we’re with Cook.’
Too heavy, lass,’ Grandad told Fanny, but he didn’t move her off. They sat around companionably. Fanny wasn’t talking so much now. They ate fish and chips sitting round the table with its shiny oilcloth. The paraffin lamps had been lit, they made odd shadows across the faces so that staring (for weren’t they all strangers until today at least?), she saw Ben watching her. He grinned. Sitting opposite: grinning, then saying: ‘Eat chips first. They’re cold quicker.’
‘Daft,’ Auntie said. She looked tired now. A bit cross too. Grandad had said, half jokingly, about the tea: ‘What’s this then?’ holding up the mug. ‘Been washing again?’
Uncle James said, placatory, ‘It’s weak enow, but –’ She flared up: ‘It said on packet – it did now – as good in second water –’
Edwina said, ‘I like it like this. I don’t like it strong.’ They all looked terribly surprised that she’d spoken. Grandad looked at her suddenly, approving, making a clucking noise with his tongue.
It was time to go. Ben would walk them up to Jane’s.
Then after they’d collected Cook, he said he’d come up to see the train off. He loved trains. Fanny had been buttonholed by Cook, and Edwina found she could walk a little behind with him. They stopped then on the cliff top. There was a steamer caught in the evening sun. Ben said: ‘She’s for Sunderland. My uncle, he’s her captain.’
‘Have you ever been right out to sea?’ Edwina asked.
He imitated: ‘ “Right out to sea.” What’s that?’ He was laughing. Then he said something she couldn’t catch. ‘Where’d we go today then?’ he asked laughing, grinning.
‘Real sea,’ she persisted. Fanny appeared: sent back to fetch them. ‘Like that steamer. Like the Titanic. Had you heard of that?’
‘Aye. I heard on it.’ He was still laughing at her.
Fanny said, ‘I might go on it, the Titanic. To Rhodesia. To see my Uncle Clive.’ It was the first Edwina had heard of it.
Ben didn’t seem all that impressed. Cook could be seen making angry signals. They walked on, more hurried now. From an alley nearby a dog ran out, spotted black and white, feathery tail. Ben made as if to chase it, and as he moved, it might have been her. [‘I hate the way you walk,’ Mother said.]
On impulse she called, ‘Ben,’ and then as he turned, opening her purse, she took out a silver threepence. ‘Give that to Jack for goodies. He wanted –’
‘It’ll go on lasting stripes.’ He put his hand out. ‘Right then – You can trust me.’ He took it from her: the skin on his hands was worn, parts calloused. He smiled again: what she’d thought earlier was a frown was just his brows going together.
‘I’ll trust you,’ she said.
One of the maids, crouching down, making up her bedroom fire for her: ‘Cook heard of it,’ she said, ‘there’s been a big boat gone down.’
‘Is the lifeboat out?’ Edwina asked, thinking already that she would have to go and look. But just then Fanny was in the room, panting, eyes excited: ‘My dear, have you heard? The Titanic –’
She couldn’t sleep that night, couldn’t rid herself of the image of Uncle Frederick. He rose above the waves, fighting, riding the great white horses. She thought, he is going under. In the bed she turned and tossed. These icy waters.
It was her last day there. The atmosphere was funereal. They sat with Cook in the kitchen for a while. Fanny read out of the Daily Mail: She could not have enough of it. Edwina didn’t want to read about it at all. Cook told them that one of the workers, the builders, in Belfast it was, had scrawled on the side of the ship, ‘Invincible to God and Man.’ ‘What can you expect?’ she said.
Fanny said, ‘Just listen to this– “Why,” cried one lady, weeping because her father was aboard, “the captain can press a button and save everybody…”’
Cook stirred sugar into her tea. The waste. It cost near on a million, they say –’
The first day of term Meresia wasn’t in uniform but came along the shining corridors in a white ninon dress strewn with flower motifs, with a big sash and a picture hat. ‘Have you seen her?’ breathed Annette. Glimpsed and then tost again she was seen to be, as Edwina had always known she was, much much more beautiful than her mother. The most beautiful person in the world.
Several of them were to make their First Communion at Corpus Christi. Edwina didn’t wonder what Ohrist would taste like: although it wouldn’t be ordinary bread, she knew it well from Altar Pudding, Clare’s favourite. Hateful remnants of unwanted Communion hosts, trimmings, stirred up with gooseberry jam. Ugh. (Jesus, Mary and Joseph assist me in my last agony, 100 days.)
Mother Bede was in charge of the dormitory this term. Usually they only saw her in the library at weekends, when they chose their Baroness Orczy or their Rider Haggard. She interfered more than Mother Cuthbert. When she came round at night she really looked at everything. Even their knickers. White knicker linings must be turned inside out each night for an airing. ‘Otherwise they get so stuffy.’
Meresia had a letter one morning at breakfast and could be seen to be fighting back tears. It was the second week of term. Marion, who had a pash for Jean, did some spying. She told them: ‘Jean said, “Meresia’s parents are going to be separated.”’ Annette said she didn’t realize Catholics were allowed to, but Clare explained that it was all right so long as they didn’t marry anyone else.
Edwina lay in bed imagining Lydia Merriwether saying, ‘I want to be separate, I don’t want you,’ to Meresia’s father. She thought she would probably declaim it like an actress. The worry for Meresia kept her awake. When she did fall asleep she dreamed she was riding a donkey, the saddle loaded with baggage. She knew she should hit it to make it go, but even though she had a big stick, she couldn’t. There were some steps in the distance leading up to a high building. Standing on them was a small woman, very hideous, dressed like a nun, but in brown not black. Her face was brown too and wizened. Edwina was afraid of her at once, but she knew that she must be brave so she dismounted and walked up to her. She held out her hand; ‘I’m Edwina,’ she said. ‘And why would I speak with you,’ the old woman said, ‘when I’m a person who’s shaken hands with Queen Victoria?’ She stretched her arm then and touched Edwina’s hands. It was so painful, prickly, burning. ‘You’re a witch,’ Edwina said. Then she woke up. She was already scratching at her hands; looking at the dreaded eczema.
She had her first piano lesson the next day. He looked as hateful as ever. He was wearing a brown velvet jacket with a red rose in his buttonhole. She stood awkwardly, head right up, hands turned out behind her back.
‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Edwina.’ She looked away. ‘Don’t tell me you lovely little girls don’t know your Shakespeare.’ He patted the piano stool: ‘Sit down, please.’ She sat on her hands, knowing it was a silly thing to do. He pulled at her arm. She strugg
led. ‘Titania!’
‘My name’s Edwina.’ She laid her hands resignedly on the edge of the piano. He picked one up, looked at it then dropped it carelessly. ‘I thought so.’ Then suddenly changing his manner; ‘Well, Edwina. I’ve written a piece for you as promised. La voilà. “Edwina”.’
It was horrible, she thought. It reminded her of ‘In the Shadows’ and ‘Narcissus’ at Madame Lambert’s dancing class.
‘Well, qu’en penses-tu? Do you like it?’
‘Yes.’ She remembered her manners. ‘You’re very kind.’ Then she added: ‘It doesn’t sound like me really. Not like I am.’
‘What are you like?’
Her answer was to get out her music, set it up and begin to play. Sitting with him she felt that she played mechanically, like a doll. He scarcely listened to her. He was adjusting the angle of the rose.
‘I’m glad you like it. I shall put it in an album.’
The next week, he played it for her as she came into the room. ‘Quite my favourite piece for the moment,’ he declared. ‘Composition. I know my good fortune in having the gift. A good fairy at my christening perhaps?’
He picked up her hand. ‘I little better. What have we been doing? Zambuk, Cuticura – sticky ointments?’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘Revenons à nos moutons. I think some Chopin. For the end-of-term piece. What do you say to that? All fire and passion.’ He touched her hair: ‘So thick. When you play it sets up an electric charge perhaps? Couldn’t you be a little calmer? Yes, we’ll allow you the Chopin, I think.’ For sight-reading he produced something very hard: it was as if watching her walk with ease he was willing her to stumble. It was difficult but she could – just. Seeing always a little ahead, her body played it.
That was why she minded so much When, pulling his chair round and back a little, he laid his hands on her shoulders, lightly. He’d done that before. It was an insect tickling, buzzing. But today he moved ‘his hands down further, touching the stuff of her blouse. She went on playing. He had found where her breasts were beginning to grow, the little bit at the end, the nipple. He pressed it. ‘We ought really to do some theory,’ he said. ‘Minor thirds. Give me an example of a minor third –’ All the while he went on massaging, working at her. She wondered if perhaps she should say something. She supposed she would have to suffer. Certainly, she couldn’t tell anybody.
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