The Mistressclass

by Michèle Roberts

  He teetered. No time to be lost. He wasn’t drunk. Not really. He didn’t want to fall off of course not.

  They were yelling at him.

  Of course they were right.

  Rescue me.

  He needed to get down. He lifted one foot. He slipped on the curved surface of the parapet. He put his foot down again. The soles of his boots lost their grip and he lost his balance he stretched out his arms he jumped up to the high angel roof he flew.

  PART 15

  Autumn is a time of year your favourite poets associate with loss and death, is it not, cher Monsieur? How many long, dull stanzas did you not force us to commit to memory and then recite out loud to you in class? For you, however, in reality, autumn in Brussels was an invigorating season: your chance to display your powers afresh at the start of the new school term; new lectures to prepare; new lessons to plan; new pupils to cajole, hector, dazzle, reward with the occasional fond word or caress.

  But my second year at your school was my first without Emily, and so my heart grew heavier as the autumn months wore on. It was one thing to be a pupil there with her; quite another to have returned alone as a pupil-teacher. Difficult to struggle against the melancholy produced by the dank chill of those early mornings, the wind sweeping the streets scuffing the last plane leaves into the gutter, the bandstand abandoned and silent in the park, the grey mist wreathing the house. It rained a lot, insistent rain that penetrated the thickest boots and gusted under hats and umbrellas. I’d come in, damp skirts clinging to my knees, from an errand or a walk in town, and stand shivering in the cold tiled hallway, listening to the sounds of merriment issuing from behind the door to the salon where you played with your children. Close to you, doubtless, Madame Heger sat by serenely with her embroidery, supervising you all, making sure your games did not become too boisterous and rough, to the possible detriment of her china ornaments balanced on flimsy three-legged tables.

  I saw far less of you than formerly. Now that I was helping to teach, and not simply learning, our schedules clashed; I could no longer, for example, attend your composition class as often as I wished. You and Madame Heger both invited me to use your salon as my own, to join you there in the evenings; but I could not let myself intrude on your domestic sanctum, your sacred pleasures with your children. So, at any rate, I declared in my letters home.

  What a liar I was. I was too jealous, that’s all; I couldn’t bear witnessing your happiness as you romped and laughed, your wife benevolently looking on. Instead I banished myself; I condemned myself, bad girl, to detention. After I’d finished preparing my teaching work for the next day in the rapidly darkening classroom I’d eat my supper with the others in the refectory. Then, leaving the pupils to their evening recreation, study and lecture pieuse, I’d go upstairs to my cubicle in the cold, silent dormitory, with a candle, and spend my evening up there alone, sitting on my bed, my hands wrapped in my sleeves, the end of my nose icy and raw, my heart sick and full of dread for the future. It was clear to me that one day soon I’d have to leave. Madame Heger would make sure she got rid of me; in the nicest possible way. It would be for my own benefit; I’d thank her for it one day; my own good sense should tell me that. With her voice pitter-pattering in my ears like the rain I’d undress and say my prayers, lie awake shivering, pray for sleep.

  Here, in Nohant, the autumn weather has been warm enough for us to continue lunching out of doors, to take walks, to go on picnics. This afternoon I went mushrooming with Madame Sand and her grandchildren. She was expecting a visitor to arrive later on, and wanted something delicious to serve him for supper. We put on sturdy boots and armed ourselves with walking-sticks, and long flat baskets made by Thomas, woven of split hazel twigs. Over our crinolines we tied on thick linen aprons borrowed from the cook.

  We took the trap and drove to the woods. We unhitched the mare and tied her loosely to a tree, left her cropping the grass at the edge of the road, plunged into green-gold darkness. The children ran about playing hide-and-seek but Madame Sand was hunting seriously. She spotted our fat treasures first almost every time, pouncing with cries of triumph. She kept exulting at how many I missed: oh, you didn’t see these but I did; I’ve got the eyes of a lynx.

  She was laughing with pleasure at our freedom to explore wherever we wanted. She told me a tale of her youth in Paris, when she dressed as a man in order to go to the theatre on her own, roam the boulevards without fear of being harassed and attacked. I told her how I sent out my books in a similar masculine disguise. No false gallantry, therefore, had afflicted either of us. Though both of us had to endure plenty of insults once our deception was uncovered.

  My hostess could talk and mushroom-hunt at the same time. She concentrated on the task in hand, sharp eyes cast down, swerving around. I thought of Emily: how much she would have enjoyed this expedition. It hurts less to remember her than it once did; she’s inside me now; we cannot be parted ever again. Aurore cried to me: you’re off in a dream. No wonder she found more mushrooms. Six to every one of mine.

  So we circled back to the horse and trap and drove home, the sun in the west blinding our eyes, Aurore shouting that she couldn’t see a thing but going at her usual speed anyway. She does it to amuse the little ones, who love being scared. We bumped up and down over muddy ruts, nearly jumping out of our seats, holding on tight. Aurore went straight down to the kitchen, to confer with the cook about how best to present our finds. The two of them are often in dispute and this occasion was like many others I have witnessed. Their voices erupted at the top of the kitchen stairs. Grilled. No: fried with garlic and parsley. No: simmered in cream. No: baked in pastry.

  I came into the salon with the children and lit the fire laid ready waiting in the grate, and I sat by it, smelling the scent of the logs, and felt a fizz between my shoulder-blades, like a taste of sweetness, almost an ache, which was the happiness of the afternoon in the woods with Aurore flowing on into the happiness of wanting to share it with you, like a piece of honeycomb broken off that I could offer you, a gold crust dripping with sugar. And so I thought of you peacefully and I embraced your absence and wished you all joy.

  I shall toss this letter into the fire eventually. A burnt offering. Unlike the mushrooms, which bubbled quietly in a bath of hot butter, a splash of white wine, on the stove in the kitchen below, and then were brought upstairs in a pink china dish. Madame Sand’s visitor, her friend Monsieur Flaubert (the novelist), ate two helpings. So did I. He departed this morning. His presence put us en fête. We ate well, we drank good wine, we polkaed and waltzed, we played Charades, we went for walks, we frolicked in the garden with the children, we strummed the piano and sang. Monsieur Flaubert dressed up as a woman one night and danced the chahucha. Accordingly I donned a cravat and waistcoat and twirled opposite him.

  The highlight of the entertainment, as far as the children were concerned, were the plays with the puppets that we wrote and performed. Have I mentioned the puppets? Aurore’s son Maurice converted one of the smaller downstairs salons into a puppet theatre some time ago, with curtains and painted scenery, and carved many puppet-actors, representing a range of characters, comic to tragic to grotesque.

  Watching the puppets jerk and dance from their strings I was reminded of my father’s story of how, when we were small, he lined us up in front of him in his study, and handed us masks, which he bade us hold up before our faces. We were to speak through these masks in answer to his questions. This was done with the best of intentions, in order to lessen our nervousness in being addressed by such a tall, imposing personage as himself, and so to encourage us to give our true opinions. Accordingly, we spoke. When asked what a child most lacked, we answered: age and experience. What to do with a naughty boy? Reason with him, and if he won’t listen to reason then whip him. What’s the difference between the intellects of men and women? Men’s are stronger than women’s, as their bodies are. What’s the best book in the world? The Bible. He was proud of these replies, and recorded them in
a note, considering that they evinced remarkable evidence of our precocious understanding.

  I have no memory of this experience. It was my father’s legend he handed to us, his formative myth of our early years. All these years later, I wonder now whether we little children really did speak as we felt or as we already knew, by that subtle intelligence infants develop very young of the needs of their elders and betters, our father required? We reportedly gave him, after all, the correct answers; ones he could approve of. Could we, so young, have dared to speak otherwise? Not inside the house, that’s certain; not in Father’s study; and not in the parlour, where Aunt ruled. In the kitchen, with Tabby, we were free to a certain extent. We teased and mocked her, rude little beasts that we were. And in bed at night, as I told you before, we made up our own plays and spoke our own lines.

  Outside, on the moors, we ran completely wild. Played dangerous games, fought each other, had adventures, took mad risks. That’s where my mind grew and took flight: in our complete freedom outside the house; out on the open, unpeopled moors. And so when Aunt came to live with us, to care for us and teach us better, that’s when we had to invent our magical kingdoms over which only children ruled, where only children’s imaginations held sway. Emily managed to hold on to her inner kingdom and never left it. The rest of us were born bitterly into the real world.

  My dear, good father. Have I gone on speaking to him from behind a mask, like a character in a play? Like a girl in a story? Is that how I talked to Arthur too?

  Who wrote my story and described the devoted daughter, good wife, hard-working teaching assistant, devout churchgoer? Who fitted me in? A fiction, all of it, on one level, however compelling; however convenient sometimes. Yes: a mask I hid myself behind. Cowardly Charlotte. But I was schooled at Cowan Bridge, remember. I learned early on to starve, to long hopelessly for maternal kindness, to freeze. Later, in your school, Monsieur, I learned that the love I wanted was forbidden. So I gave up asking. I wanted only in secret, and converted my desires into means of self-punishment. Only when I wrote novels did I invent my own mask. Telling sanctioned lies, writing fiction, I could fly free of nice Charlotte the good daughter. I could write of rage and of pain. I wrote about teeth grating on stones, about scorpions clutched in the palm. I rehearsed different lives. I imagined alternative selves. I discovered what it felt like to be someone else.

  That person dwelling neatly in the parsonage at Haworth, as fixed and predictable as a book of etiquette, was only the ghost of my real live self. I’ve left my double behind, an effigy cold and correct as a corpse, to tend to Arthur and Papa, while I frolic with Madame Sand and talk to you, my dear Monsieur. My true self dresses up and dances, is born from moment to moment, changes as feelings change, as words and desires flow in conversation. My true self dances the chahucha, goes mushroom-hunting in the woods, wants to write another novel.

  What’s the best book in the world? The one not written yet. It waits in the darkness. Like a ghost. Like the unborn.

  My first book came out of darkness.

  We were in Manchester together in the darkened room, my father and I. He could not see me and that was the whole point: he was blind; we’d gone there for the cataract operation to be performed. I was present while it was done, as he requested, and afterwards he lay for weeks very quietly and resignedly in the darkness, waiting for his sight to return. And what did I do? I wrote, of course. I started Jane Eyre. I wrote because he could not see me; he was still blind; and that freed me; in that state of freedom I could write.

  Must I blind him again if I am to write again? Oh, my poor father: no wonder I had to flee Haworth in order not to blind you a second time; in order to write I believed I had to murder you.

  Do you know why I fell in love with you, mon cher Monsieur? I admired you, certainly: your ardent intellect, your honesty, your beauty. You were young; not much older than I; bursting with vigorous life. But also I believed that from the beginning you knew me; you recognised me; you saw me, the woman, the artist; you looked at me affectionately; you called me by my true name.

  All too soon you had to vanish; I would turn you to stone; you put up your shield; you backed away; you disappeared.

  Madame Sand sees me.

  Last night I saw her and Monsieur Flaubert.

  I was very thirsty and the carafe on the washstand was empty. I tiptoed downstairs in the darkness. The study door was slightly ajar. A seesaw of voices. I peeped in. There they both were, armchairs pulled up to the fire, feet up on the fender, dashing at it hammer and tongs, that ardent discussion on literature they’d begun earlier and which quite clearly would keep them going half the night. Now Aurore was no longer the gracious hostess, the kind grandmother; she was not in the salon any longer, in public view; now she was simply his friend the writer, as ferocious as he. They were in disagreement, arguing out their differences over a nightcap, frowning and smiling both at once; passionate; trying not to interrupt each other too much; enjoying themselves.

  He got up to pour them both more brandy. He glanced over at the door and saw me. He winked. I fled. I filled my carafe in the kitchen and came back up here to bed.

  Good night, dear master. Thank you for listening. Time to tear this up and burn it and sleep. Time to think about returning home.

  PART 16

  The day after meeting Adam in the Flora café, Vinny left for France on the early boat. She got up at four a.m. and sped along empty roads to Portsmouth like a criminal making a getaway.

  She reached Sainte-Madeleine after lunch in a routier, stopping on the outskirts of Sainte-Marthe for petrol and provisions. Since last year a tree-surrounded field had been levelled, scalped. The new supermarket bristled up, a long, single-storey, marigold-yellow prefab on the main road, with a plate-glass door and no windows. Shiny and hard-edged, it crouched like a beetle in its huge car-park, glittering gravelled tarmac bordered with neat beds of ranked orange, blue and pink pansies and primulas surrounding oblongs of scarlet shrub roses. No rest for the eye; you felt tired looking at such bright, bony plants. Somebody had tried to soften the environment, had made an effort at adornment, but the effect remained harsh. The flowers and bushes needed green around them and there was none.

  The little back road out of Sainte-Madeleine was busy with tractors. The hedgerow trees almost met overhead. She swung right at the dumpy stone cross with the empty niche at its heart. Formerly a porcelain statue of the Virgin had lodged there, tolerated by Robert because it was old, but it had been stolen two years ago. Vinny’s hands were suddenly clammy on the wheel. In all these years of coming to visit Jeanne for the occasional long weekend, she had never gone back to Les Deux Saintes. She had preferred not to. She had walked past the bottom of the lane and never turned up it. She had avoided visiting during the school holidays, so that she did not overlap with Adam and Catherine. Once Robert had transformed the house into a gîte, Jeanne earned some extra money by acting as caretaker, held the keys for the tourists who came to stay, but Vinny had never accompanied her to help settle the guests in. No thanks. I’ll get the supper on instead. This time she had decided to sleep at Les Deux Saintes, to spend the days there on her own. Jeanne was offended; had to be smoothed down.

  The steep bank on the left-hand side of the lane waved with patches of nettles, white clumps of greater stitchwort and Solomon’s seal, stands of dark pink foxgloves and white daisies nodding above green ferns. She accelerated up the slope, turned the last bend, and halted.

  The house was knee-deep in feathery grass. The tops of two lilacs rose up out of this green excess and foamed whiteness to one side of the blue slate roof. The low building was like an animal collapsed fast asleep. Almost hidden in its pasture. Perhaps the Sleeping Beauty had looked like that; comfortable as a cow. All rumpled and flung down and not caring; slumped bones under a velvet coat.

  Faded lavender paint peeled from the closed shutters; blue blisters and blue cracks. Unlocked, the parched blue door did not budge. Vinny’s shoulders reme
mbered what you had to do; she leaned against it until it squeaked open, scraping on the tiled floor. She stepped forwards into the darkness, turned sideways, groped for the window catches, and opened the windows. She unbolted the shutters, pushed them wide. Sunlight flung itself through the gap, bleached walls and floor.

  Catherine had said the house had not been let since Christmas. Vinny was an intruder barging in, startling the spiders in residence. Big black ones skittered on fat hairy legs into the corners. Smaller ones folded their limbs and hid in their webs. Smell of dust. The house felt powdery-dry. Cobwebs blurred the angles of the walls and swung in furry swags between the rafters.

  She went back out into the garden, descended the steps into the front orchard. A green sea. Crickets rasped: the sound of heat. Horseflies from the cows in the field circled her head. The grass was waist-high. She pushed into it like a swimmer, parting it in front of her with both hands. She moved slowly through its dry fragrance. Tall stalks rustled about her, bent open in her wake. The branches of the cherry made a green tracery overhead. Rags of blue sky were patched in between the jagged edges of the leaves. The former potager had disappeared. The grass had closed over it and swallowed it up. In the centre of the orchard a tall hawthorn waved unruly arms.

  She turned and slowly forced a path back. Sweet-smelling greenery tickled her nose; showers of seeds sprayed out; waves of stored sun. A perfect hiding-place for children to build dens in. A hot and aromatic wilderness that snakes would adore.

  The thought of snakes made her retreat to the van. She took out her bags and groceries, carried them inside.

  Catherine had given her a list of small items of furniture to bring back, as well as crockery and books. But before packing, she cleaned. She spent the first three days at it. She opened all the windows and doors and played music very loud and set to, sweeping and dusting, washing and polishing.