The Island School

The clock keeps the time moving slowly and the heavy book emits its sour leathery smell. Jesus stares at me accusingly from his crucifix; he died just for me, I should remember that.

‘The seventh commandment is … Jemima?’

‘Thou shalt not steal, miss.’

‘Very good, child.’

I watch Jemima surreptitiously rubbing her knuckles beneath the desk, and I try not to feel grateful that it was her and not me who faced Mrs. Dwyer’s cane today. The bitch knows that the poor girl suffers with her nerves, just like her mother who had to be shipped to the nuthouse on the mainland when Jemima was a baby. Officially, she went over to help her sisters run the farm that they inherited from their parents. But word travels easily in these places. The doctor in the next village, the one who delivered me because she was a woman and mother couldn’t bear to have Dr. Bryan see up her skirts, with the midwife herself sick with the flu; well, she told her husband, who told his mistress, who told her husband, who told his fishy bearded friends at the pub. So now everyone knows that Mrs. Jasper has gone mad and been locked up in the asylum. And poor Jemima either bursts into tears or fits of laughter with almost no provocation. My father says that she’ll probably end up on the mainland too, which seems particularly unforgiving for a man in his profession.

‘Felicity, sit still! If I see you fidget again you will be made to spend the rest of the lesson in the yard without a coat. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, miss. Sorry, miss.’

She doesn’t realise that I have bare legs beneath this skirt, and it’s the scratchy wool that’s making me uncomfortable. It’s just so hot in here. And Tom wants to go climbing after school, in those brief few minutes between being let out of class and my mother getting home. A sweet period of less than an hour each afternoon, when my parents think I’m reading the great book in the study. But if I snag my stockings on the rough bark and end up with a hole then the game will be up and I’ll be in trouble. So my legs itch and itch beneath this wool skirt, and all for nothing because the snow outside stops us climbing anyway.

Tom goes to the school next door. It’s crazy, really, with only two dozen children in the whole village, that we’re kept apart from the boys. It isn’t really any wonder, then, that when people here reach adulthood and are expected to marry, they pick altogether the wrong person and end up in all sorts of bother. I bet Jemima’s father didn’t know that his wife was batty until he married her and she started going for long walks through the village and across the fields, singing at the top of her lungs. He hadn’t known the first thing about her, just as Tom’s mother couldn’t have guessed that her future husband would need regular forays to the mainland in order to maintain the façade of being happily married, when really he preferred the company of men. She couldn’t have known that one day he wouldn’t return at all. To this day Mrs. Flannery swears that her husband was murdered whilst on a trip to the cattle market, although some of his peers equally swear that they knew it would always come to this. I have ways of knowing these details about peoples’ lives. It isn’t difficult, really. It’s all there.

‘Fiona, what were the names of Jesus’ disciples? I’d like them all in order of appearance in the good book, please.’

Poor Fiona won’t know this. She struggles in class and everyone knows her father’s a fisherman who likes a drink and never goes to church. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Dwyer picked her out. The sins of the father. It’s the belt for her, no doubt.

‘Felicity, take yourself outside. Immediately! Stay on the step until I come for you!’

I contemplate sitting on the snow-covered front step, beneath the arched doorway inscribed with St. Jude’s Girls’ School.  My legs are no longer hot and itchy, but cold and speckled with goosebumps. Mrs. Dwyer’s evil insistence that I leave my coat on the peg means that I may well end up sick, and no doubt I’ll be punished for that, too. So off I go, to the school gate, turn left and follow the brick wall around the school to the trees at the back. I kick the soft virgin snow out in front of me. Blobs of white fall from the branches above, onto my hatless head. The woods don’t have a smell today. The snow has smothered the fallen leaves, the rotting fruit and fragrant pine needles. The soft mulch underfoot has frozen and the woods have become a new place, silent and fresh. I know that Mrs. Dwyer could follow my footprints into the woods, but I don’t think she will. She’ll wait for me to return of my own free will, not that I’m allowed to have much of that, and save this misdeed for a punishment grander than any yet administered.

            As my snow angel takes shape, I wonder if I will become sick and have to be rescued, like Catherine out there on the desolate moors. My mother would be horrified if she knew that I read her books, more that she would know that I had discovered them, her dirty secret. Jude the Obscure, Vanity Fair, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Hidden away from my father. I can’t imagine when and how she managed to read them. Most secret of all is the tiny key to the hidden bureau drawer resting inside the pages of Adam Bede, a story, I now know, concerning complicated love in a small religious community. After reading the letters, I realise the significance of the choice of hiding place for the key. It seems foolhardy for her to keep these documents, containing such passion and adoration as they do. Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to really consider the timing of the affair in relation to my own appearance in this world. For now, I’ll return to the classroom and face the wrath of my mother.