The Mistressclass

by Michèle Roberts

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 3

  Part 4

  Part 5

  Part 6

  Part 7

  Part 8

  Part 9

  Part 10

  Part 11

  Part 12

  Part 13

  Part 14

  Part 15

  Part 16

  Part 17

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Michèle Roberts

  About the Author

  Copyright

  for Penny Valentine

  PART 1

  It’s over. It’s finished. I told myself to obey you and never to write to you again. Witness my weakness, then, that after this long silence I dare to address you once more.

  My dear master.

  Just writing those familiar words makes me feel we have never been parted. The language that links us is an invisible, living cord. Not the banal phrases of everyday, that others use, but a secret poetry which joins us one to another, mind to mind and heart to heart. That knot of belonging has never been untied. If I were not connected to you by that cord then I should die. From your lips I learned our hidden language and at your side I practised it. Picking up my pen to write to you I re-engage with cherished words that have remained fresh and evergreen, that are for ever and indissolubly associated with you. At the risk of displeasing you I cannot deny myself this indulgence. Forgive me.

  You used to correct my devoirs for me in red ink, do you remember? You pointed out my faults with severity, but I cherished every red mark your sharp nib scratched on my paper; you did not draw blood; I translated your fierceness, understood your critical words as caresses on my skin. I treasured every savage and satirical rebuke you scrawled in my margins. My poor compositions, draft after draft laboured over with such toil. What made them worthy at all in any way was the pains you took to make me improve.

  You don’t want to read this composition. I know that. I should not be writing to you at all.

  I’ll start again.

  My dear sir. I trust you are in excellent health, and Madame Heger too. And the children, of course. Please pass on to them my best regards. I hope that the school continues to flourish, and that your own studying and researches go well.

  You wretched hypocrite, Charlotte. That is not at all what you want to say. You meek, genteel pretender, babbling clichés and polite nothings.

  I apologise. To you, for bothering you, and to myself for writing falsely.

  Children speak the truth, don’t they? Until they are taught manners and conventional morality and learn to lie. Emily never lied. She always spoke the truth. She was fearless. She looked me in the face and said exactly what she thought.

  If my daughter had lived I’d have brought her up to be as truthful as Emily. But she died. For a long time afterwards I lost all connection with the world of the living: I pursued my daughter towards the land of the dead. I sojourned there for some substantial time, wandering in the darkness, seeking her. Finally I decided to return. Back to the ashy world.

  If my girl had lived I’d have had to consider sending her to school. I’d have taught her myself, here at home in Haworth, for as long as possible, but sooner or later, once she was growing up, I’d have had to contemplate sending her away.

  If I had a living, breathing daughter, and not just this memory of a dead child, should I send her abroad to boarding-school? To Brussels, for example? To a pensionnat such as yours? What do you think, my dear master? Would you welcome her? Would you welcome me if I brought her to you?

  A change of climate might do me good. Our wet weather makes me depressed. It has rained ceaselessly for over a month. It is the wettest spring I can ever remember, but then I say that every year. The front garden is a pond. The gravestones in the churchyard are sinking. Water carves a muddy track along the road from the moors above, swirls off to the sides and floods the ditches. It swerves past the parsonage wall, swishes over the thresholds of the cottages in the street below.

  But why should I write to you about the weather in England, which, as I remember you were fond of asserting, must be the worst in Europe? Why should I bother you by writing to you at all? Oh, my dear master, it is because I cannot prevent myself. Try as I might to forbid my hand to do otherwise, it will insist on picking up my pen. Try as I will to refuse to allow my thoughts to dwell on you, my heart to fill with tender memories of you, I am betrayed by these traitorous enemies within my gates, these servants who will not do reason’s bidding. Short of tying myself to a chair or locking myself inside a cupboard—well, my hands must move; they must touch, if they may not touch your cheek, then at least this pen that circles around but cannot openly spell out my forbidden, inexpressible wishes.

  For that reason, of course, I shall never send you this letter. As far as you are concerned I shall remain dumb and dead, buried in my moorland village, lost to good works and church on Sundays and the care of my husband and father.

  These duties ought to be enough to satisfy me, I know. But much as I love my husband and my father they are not the only companions I crave. I miss my friends. I miss talking openly to them in letters. Arthur is afraid, if I write honestly to friends, that I shall betray myself and him. People are gossips, he says: why reveal your intimate secrets to the world? He trusts neither me nor my friends. I am forbidden to write to any friend who will not promise to destroy my letters once she’s read them.

  If I could write another novel I might be happier. But something inside me has dried up. I’ve lost that passion which was formerly the core of my being. I have turned aside to become the pattern of a good wife. I spend my days visiting parishioners in need, copying out Arthur’s sermons, darning flannel nightclothes, peeling potatoes, reading to Papa, helping Martha turn out the parlour. Don’t misunderstand me: I know these are honourable tasks, to be gladly embraced for the sake of the family I love and seek to serve.

  Emily did not despise housework. She wrote at the same time. She kneaded bread while reading a book or composed in her head while doing the ironing. She cut out her own space for writing wherever she was; so powerful was her will that she pushed others to the distance she required. She carved a house of air and lived tranquilly inside it, and the rest of us were shut out beyond her invisible walls, watching her lips move as she peeled apples for the boiled pudding for dinner and made up poems in her head. I’m not like Emily. But it is not the fault of brooms and mops and colanders that I write no more. No, it’s as though I cannot allow myself to believe now that writing should form the main activity of my life. I’ve lost the habit and the need and the desire.

  Do you know why? Because you are not close to me anymore, to inspire me and argue with me and spur me on.

  I should like to go back to school, and learn how to write again. I should like to sit in your classroom, Monsieur, and learn from you. Had she lived, my daughter would need to go to school. How much more does her mother need some education!

  My husband, Arthur, who is a good man, I assure you, Monsieur, believes that a married woman can easily find time to write. That he never interrupts me or calls me away from my desk with some request. And since I’m sitting there writing nothing at all I let him summon me to come out for a walk or whatever else he suggests. Living with Arthur I can never be at
peace for long because he works at home. He writes sermons in the study but he doesn’t stay in there. Why should he? Now that we’re married he’s no longer the shy curate who lingers in the passage. The whole of the parsonage is his domain. He scatters his papers all over the dining-room; he prowls through the parlour searching for his pipe; he rummages in the bedroom for a clean collar. There’s no corner which is safe from him. But it’s not his fault I have gone dry.

  He says of novel-writing that my words just flow on to the page. A leak, a spillage, like blood? He does not like to spell out his meanings. This is a house in which unspoken and unwritten words fly about trapped like moths at night attracted by lit lamps, rattling and bumping in the small rooms, my cramped heart, blundering at mirrors, trying to find a way out again. Words in this house pile up in corners, lie in heaps under the stairs, fall out of closets when you open them. Angry words are forbidden in a Christian house and so they have to be got rid of like dust and dirt. That’s my job now: to throw words away; to control them and hold them down, like children weeping or like lunatics; to cover them with clean surfaces like the holland covers for chairs, the starched tablecloths for Sunday tea. But I am bursting with words, Monsieur; I have not changed from the girl I was when first you knew me; you encouraged me to speak, Monsieur, as you encouraged me to write; you listened to what I said and you read what I wrote and you responded to both.

  How could I not love you? How could I possibly stop loving you?

  I fell in love with you and longed to bear your child. A wicked wish. I was punished for it. I was driven away.

  Of course I can’t write another novel. Writing leads me to daydream, to think of you. To imagine entering the room in which you are sitting reading. I approach you, taking your hand as you take mine. You address me kindly and you kiss me on both cheeks.

  Then we begin to talk.

  I planned to name my daughter Constantine, after you. Of course I did.

  I shall tear this up. I shan’t send it. But I have relieved my heart of its burden of words, and so I bid you good night, dear master.

  I remain your ever faithful pupil

  Charlotte

  PART 2

  Perhaps it was a log, that dark shape, half submerged, propelled by the current from the direction of Blackfriars. Nobody except Adam took much notice. He spotted it because he was leaning over the western side of Southwark Bridge watching the play of sunlight on the choppy water below; mackerel patterns of silvery-black. Now a new motif entered the picture, disturbing the ripple dance.

  Bulky and anonymous as a lost kitbag, the chunk of wood swayed along, floating gradually downstream, bobbing up and back in the wake of a passing launch. Finally it bumped against the raft supporting the group of engineers in white overalls and hard hats studying the profile of the Millennium Bridge. Above them, suspended on wires from the structure’s underside, dangled little bales of hay, neatly trussed. Tourists on the far bank of the river, outside the Globe, chattered and pointed. Were these grassy cubes in fact sculptures, related to some arte povera installation at the nearby Tate? Were they a sophisticated means of testing and judging wobble and sway? Adam opted for recognising them as simple signs, to water traffic, of work in progress. He peered over the parapet, the sun in his eyes, as the log, or kitbag, came to rest in a swirl of straw and twigs. Something odd there. But squinting at it from this distance he could not say what.

  Just west of Southwark Bridge, on the northern shore of the Thames at Queenhythe, the earliest Roman dock in the City is still clearly marked: a small oblong inlet, surrounded on three sides by modern flats and office blocks, with a walkway, fringing them, built out over the water on wooden stilts. At high tide the brimming river surges in and laps at these piles of stone and brick, rocking to and fro between their containing arms, slapping up against green slime. At low tide, when the flood retreats, a little beach appears, strewn with bits and pieces of debris tossed from pleasure-boats and carried along by the current until they catch and loiter here, a thick line of tarry dirt like a rim of scum on the side of an emptying bath. Plastic bottles, sodden cigarette packets, split footballs, lumps of driftwood: they wash up; halt; stopped in shingly mud. Further out towards midstream the moored Corporation rubbish-barge bears a sign requesting crews and passengers not to drop litter; but they do. Let the river carry it all away: beer-cans, cardboard boxes, crisps packets, sandwich crusts; over the side with it, and away it swims; out of sight and forgotten.

  Who was that woman walking to and fro down there, across the mud and stones? The sun dazzled on her red hair.

  * * *

  Vinny had driven to Waterloo with the effigy propped up next to her on the front seat of the van. Fellow drivers, stuck in neighbouring lanes at red lights or creeping past around packed roundabouts, took no notice of her odd passenger. When they hooted at her or gestured obscenely or deliberately nudged too close it was not because she had chosen to take a life-sized doll for an airing but because she was not aggressive enough in leaping through gaps or getting away from green lights and so was holding them up.

  The effigy was constructed on the model of those guys she and Catherine had made every year, in childhood, for Bonfire Night. Nowadays children did not go to much trouble to make a Guy Fawkes. Collecting money was all that mattered. Penny for the old guy, Miss! Penny for the old guy! A pillowcase stuffed with a cushion, a balloon attached, was considered sufficient. But Vinny’s guys had had faces and hats, arms and legs, and clutched handfuls of rockets. In my young day, she heard herself remarking fogyishly to the penny-collectors, we made proper guys. They would look at her patiently. Crusty old bat to be tolerated. Then she would give them fifty pence. She too loved fireworks.

  The art competition was designed to garner publicity for the forthcoming weekend community festival on the South Bank. On the theme of heroes, it was open to London residents, of any age, working in any medium. Entries were to be delivered on Friday, ready for judging on Saturday morning, when the festival would be launched with a breakfast picnic and brass-band concert. Vinny was a poet, rather than a maker of soft sculptures. She decided to take part on a whim, just for fun. Working at the hospice, you grabbed any available chance to be childish and silly off-duty. She constructed the figure at night, when she arrived home in need of winding down. She finished it on the last evening of her temporary residency among the dying patients. She formed the torso and limbs from cotton bags stuffed with old tights. Tied the arms and legs in the middle, like joined sausages in a twisted skin, to make them seem jointed. The head was another bag, adorned with a wig of curled brown locks, and a papier-mâché mask, mouth agape, tied on for face. She dressed the figure in a frilled chemise and long lace-edged drawers from a stall in Portobello, two layers of ruffled petticoats, a long blue and brown check skirt and matching blouse, stockings, black lace mittens, a small bonnet, a pair of boots.

  Once she had parked the van, she lifted the figure out, and strolled with it, her arm around its waist, towards the South Bank. She and Freddy had walked like that often, before Freddy had slid away three months ago and not come back. The wound closed over. Vinny stitched it up with strong black threads: strings of words for loss; glasses of wine; outings with friends. She wasn’t heartbroken. No point pretending. Freddy had given her a good time, and then he’d gone away to give a good time to someone else.

  A gang of teenage boys idled towards her, some with skateboards under their arms. Lumbered past. Spotting Vinny’s companion, they turned back, clattered over for a closer look. Baggy trousers, big parkas with the hoods turned up. Trying to look fierce. Wanting her to feel threatened. To Vinny they looked like rebel angels. She smiled at them and said hello. Wrong move. She’d humiliated them by not showing fear. They surrounded her, mocking and jeering. They snatched the figure from her and ran away. She followed, calling at them to stop. They were tossing the figure from hand to hand, whooping and shouting because it was so light, so easy to throw. They were tearing off the blous
e and skirt, the petticoats, the bonnet, rolling them up to make a football bundle, kicking it to and fro. She watched them chuck the figure into the water. They threw the clothes in, then the boots. The current swirled the effigy out into the middle of the river. Off it bobbed downstream, towards Blackfriars Bridge.

  Vinny yelled curses. The boys laughed, dancing about just out of reach. Then she stopped shouting. Why be so upset? The whole thing had just been a game, after all. What had happened had happened. Call it a performance piece. Call it a day.

  But she couldn’t relinquish the game. It was not over yet. She decided to follow the effigy’s progress. She sped north over Waterloo Bridge and began walking east on the broad pavement path under the plane trees. She passed the benches she loved, their armrests curled over black cast-iron crouching camels and sphinxes, the barges and boats turned into restaurants, Cleopatra’s Needle, the war memorials and plaques to dead fighters and philanthropists. The half-sunken figure bobbed along just in front, on her right, and she went after it. Under Blackfriars Bridge and on to the walkway planted with ornamental vines and shrubs. Then, at the Millennium Bridge, the figure got stuck against a raft of men who seemed to be engineers. They wore bulky white overalls and clutched clipboards. The sun reflected off their white helmets.

  Vinny perched on the balustrade fronting the riverside aspect of the Vintners’ Building and smoked a cigarette, holding herself balanced with one hand. She swung her legs, gently beating the heels of her boots against the iron struts underneath her. Waiting to see what would happen next. To Adam, idly glancing down, she looked like any happy-go-lucky and idle tourist, dithering in the spring sunshine while she decided where to go. The Globe, or Tate Modern at Bankside, or along to the shopping at Butlers Wharf.

  She glanced up, but, by the time recognition hit, he had turned away. But it was Adam. No possible mistake. She stared at him. High above her, he moved slowly forward on to the bridge, a tall shape in a big overcoat, broad shoulders hunched against the wind. Vinny jumped from her perch, crushed her cigarette underfoot, put the stub into her jacket pocket. She walked a little further along the riverside path, into the dock enclosure. Here she climbed up onto the restraining wall, swung her legs over, and clambered down the iron ladder strapped to the far side. The rods forming the rungs, striking up through her soles, hurt the arches of her feet. She winced, avoided the lowest three steps, jumped down onto the beach, the black rampart of mess.