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.