The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean Page 18

  When at last she found her way to the south verandah and entered the white room through the French doors, she lay down on her bed without undressing. Instead of feeling better, as she had hoped, the slightest movement brought a wave of nausea. All she could do was to remain as still as a corpse. Even closing her eyes was out of the question, for it made the room spin.

  She could not tell how much time passed in this way before a summer storm swept in from the west. Thunder rumbled, and through the French doors she saw the flash and flicker of sheet lightning. Water rushed along the gutters, sweeping up leaves and sticks and gurgling into downpipes, filling the rainwater tanks and pooling outside the billiard room where the ground sloped the wrong way and the verandah had subsided. The wind strengthened, and she heard the crack of a tree branch as it split and fell, and the relentless banging of a loose sheet of iron on the garden shed. Frogs emerged from their hiding places to rejoice noisily. She wondered how long she was going to suffer and if she was ever going to feel normal again.

  28

  ‘AND ROUND ABOUT THE THRONE were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.’

  Della was mincing meat for rissoles and had been reciting nonstop ever since Emily had crept into the kitchen, her head in a vice with an invisible sadist tightening the screws. She sat down at the kitchen table, hoping that a cup of weak tea might make her feel better. Della’s voice, usually so comforting, even when the topic was biblical violence and revenge, was definitely not helping.

  ‘And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices.’

  On the matter of lightnings and thunderings, the cook’s tone rose accordingly. Emily winced as each word struck her head like a hammer blow. She wanted to ask Della to stop but couldn’t summon the energy. Florrie bustled across and put down a plate of kidneys and bacon. It was the final trigger. Her stomach heaved and a rush of heat flared up from within, sweat beads popped on her forehead, and the room began to tilt. As she got up from the table, Florrie’s alarmed face hove into view. She tried to say that she felt sick but it was too late. She closed her eyes and vomited.

  Grandmother put a little bell, a jug of lemon barley water and a glass on the bedside table.

  ‘Tummy wog. Best thing is rest and you’ll be up and about in no time.’

  On the other side of the room, Eunice closed the window. ‘No time at all,’ she echoed, before moving back to stand beside Grandmother.

  ‘If you need anything, just ring the bell.’ Grandmother rested the back of her hand on Emily’s forehead. ‘Normal,’ she said. ‘It can’t be too serious.’

  Emily attempted a weak smile from her sickbed, grateful for their ministrations, and relieved that tummy wogs needed no causal explanation. She had caught sight of Della in that awful moment after her stomach had rebelled and delivered its contents onto Florrie’s recently polished kitchen floor. She was sure that Della had smelt a rat – a whisky-soaked one. It was seeing the cook’s expression that had made her feign a sort of semi-faint, knowing that she would not be able to hold out in the face of an interrogation. Thank goodness Grandmother and Eunice had not the slightest suspicion. Nevertheless, she wished the two nurses would hurry up and leave her in peace. Even their unusually benign presence felt too demanding. All she wanted to do was sleep.

  When she woke, her headache had receded, and the nausea was gone. She poured a glass of lemon barley water and gulped it down, wondering what time it was. It felt like afternoon, and the thought of something to eat was quite appealing. But so too was lying in bed. She propped herself up with pillows and gazed out at the garden. It was a cool cloudy day and every now and then raindrops splattered on the roof before the wind whisked them away. The lawn was strewn with branches and leaves ripped from the trees by the brief but violent storm of the night before. In the pear tree, parrots began to squabble and squawk. A family of blue fairy wrens hopped about on the verandah, catching insects.

  Hunger was beginning to get a grip, and she wondered whether to go down to the kitchen for a slice of cinnamon teacake and a cup of tea when Claudio walked across the lawn pushing a wheelbarrow. Sinking back against the pillows, she watched him come to a stop. He began to rake up the leaves and pile branches into the barrow. He worked with an easy rhythm, and she remembered working alongside him in the kitchen garden and wished she were beside him now. But watching him was also enjoyable. There was no need for sly glances; she could stare as much as she liked, grateful that the wide verandah sheltered the room from the sunlight, so that looking in from outside all one could see were shadows.

  When the barrow was full, and just as the clouds had dispersed and the sun came out, he leaned against the trunk of the pear tree and took out his tobacco pouch. She watched, her thoughts drifting like the smoke from his cigarette, murmuring lines from Keats’s ode ‘To Autumn’. She wanted to introduce Claudio to Keats, sure that he would respond like her, and secretly hoping that he would be impressed by her feat of memory. Committing ‘To Autumn’ to memory made her feel like the person she wanted to be, admired for her intelligence and grace, rather than the guilty sexual degenerate she feared she was becoming.

  Remembering Mrs Martingale’s instructions to the class, that poetry had to be felt and not read out like a laundry list, she stopped murmuring and recited aloud with expression.

  ‘… to swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

  And still more, later flowers for the bees,

  Until they think warm days will never cease,

  For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells –’

  She paused, feeling unnerved by the o’er-brimm’d and clammy cells, which felt far too close to her experiences in the big armchair. It was the word clammy in particular, and she was trying to think of a more tepid sort of poem when Claudio straightened up. He threw his cigarette on the ground, grinding it under his boot. She followed his gaze and saw Lydia walking through the orchard in his direction.

  Her spine stiffened, every part of her coming to attention. Was Lydia just passing by, or was she heading directly to Claudio? What could she want with him? Perhaps she had come to give him instructions about a job, in which case it would not take long as Lydia never wasted words. She said do this, do that and, on the whole, one did it.

  She was still hoping that Lydia would veer away, but she did not. She reached Claudio and began to speak to him, running her hand through her hair, pushing it off her face in a characteristic gesture that made Emily’s throat feel tight. She watched as Claudio said something in reply. She heard Lydia laugh and sensed it ripple through her body. That same laugh, just like the night she’d tried to get rid of the dress and seen Lydia outside the workshop. Then Claudio stepped back, behind the pear tree. To Emily’s consternation, Lydia followed him.

  She threw off the bedclothes and moved across to the window, but her view was still obscured by the tree. Her heart was racing, and she felt her stomach lurch and knew it was not the whisky. How long would it take her to put clothes on? She felt conflicted between staying at her post or going in search of them. But she couldn’t tear herself away in case there was something more to see, although she dreaded seeing it, whatever the ‘it’ was. And then Lydia reappeared, pushing a hand through her hair again as she walked off towards the yard.

  She waited, glued to the window. Where was Claudio? What had happened? Had they …? She tried to stop the word kissed from being thought, but it was too late. Claudio stepped into view and she saw him glance after Lydia before he turned in her direction. She bounded across to the bed and pulled the bedclothes up to her chin, as he ambled across to the wheelbarrow. He lifted it up and wheeled it away towards the compost heap at the far corner of the orchard. She heard him whistling and allowed herself a malicious thought about whistlers but couldn’t sustain it.

  Everything that
she had managed to forget or not to think, or justify and distort, surged into her consciousness. The truth could no longer be denied. Lydia and Claudio were in love. Why else would Lydia have sworn her to secrecy? And that night in the yard beside the stables, when Lydia had laughed: he must have been there. She’d been lying to herself, pretending that it wasn’t true. What’s more, the handkerchief proved it. He’d kept it as a love token.

  Eunice’s head popped around the edge of the door. ‘Oh good, you’re awake,’ she said. ‘Feeling better?’

  There was no time to hide her misery, before Eunice had reached her bedside.

  ‘Dear, oh dear,’ she clucked, and Emily burst into tears despite herself. Crying in front of Eunice was the last thing she wanted to do. ‘It was like this for me too,’ Eunice soothed. ‘We just have to make the best of it. Waifs and strays, both of us’, and she sat down on the end of the bed, patting the bedclothes in the region of Emily’s legs.

  As Eunice’s words penetrated, she pulled her legs up, out of reach. That Eunice should think they were alike was too awful to contemplate. She had a mother and a father. She was going home in two weeks. She would never be a waif or a stray. The urge to put Eunice in her place and make their differences abundantly clear was almost overwhelming, but the habits of her short lifetime held her back. She couldn’t be so rude. Meanwhile Eunice was scrabbling about under her dress from where she produced a handkerchief.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Wipe your tears.’

  Knowing that it must have been tucked into the elastic of Eunice’s bloomers, she took it, barely suppressing a look of appalled disgust; just as she feared, it was horribly warm to the touch. She tried unsuccessfully to hold her breath, but the sickly intimate scent of Lily of the Valley talcum powder insinuated itself into her nostrils. A vision of baggy bloomers and skinny old shanks rose up. She gagged, and was forced to disguise it with a coughing fit, at the end of which she saw that Eunice was holding something else that must have been in her hand since she’d entered the room: a folded-up piece of yellowing material.

  ‘Second-hand, I’m afraid, but beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve been meaning to give it to you. It’s well overdue – I can’t imagine what your mother was thinking.’ Eunice put the material on the bed and stood up. ‘If I were you, I’d get up. Lying in bed in the daytime is a recipe for melancholy.’

  Eunice’s sympathetic tone had gone, replaced with something more familiar and censorious, for which she could only feel relieved. This version of Eunice was so much easier to dislike.

  Once the door had closed and she was alone again, she picked up the thing on the bed, holding it gingerly with the tips of forefinger and thumb. To her enormous surprise it was a bra. She held it up, remembering how much she had been prepared to risk to acquire such an object. The cotton was thin and yellow from repeated laundering. She knew she ought to feel grateful to Eunice for coming to the rescue, but the thought of putting on a bra that had once encased those ancient breasts made her feel queasy. More than that, it seemed to confirm the link that her fake cousin had made: that they were both ‘waifs and strays’. They were alike. She remembered William’s words about whether she was different and tossed it to the floor.

  She lay down and pulled up the bedclothes again. But as soon as she closed her eyes, Claudio and Lydia rose up, arms around each other in a passionate embrace. She squeezed her eyes shut more tightly. Colours flashed and stars sparkled in the darkness, but her internal vision of the lovers refused to budge. She opened her eyes. It was no use – Eunice was right. Lying in bed had become a recipe for melancholy. A tear rolled down her cheek and she abandoned herself to the paradoxical pleasure of her misery. Before long, however, although she did not want to admit it, she began to feel bored.

  It was inevitable she would return to the bra. She leaned over and picked it up. Could she stand to put it on? Giving it a cautious sniff she was relieved to discover that it smelled only of freshly washed cotton. Perhaps it was not Eunice’s after all? Might it have once belonged to Lydia? The more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that this was the case. It was true that Lydia’s breasts were as round and plump as peaches, but that was now. She’d been fourteen once too.

  It took a great deal of fumbling about before she managed to put it on. At the dressing-table mirror she turned side-on before facing it again. She pushed out her chest and felt a surge of excitement at the curve of her breasts, an excitement that not even the knowledge of Claudio and Lydia’s liaison could destroy. She hoped it was not evidence of something trivial in her nature that she was able to feel this way and thought of her mother, whose mood sometimes improved with trivial distractions.

  With the bra on, there was no point in going back to bed. What’s more, she was quite ravenous and it was almost time for afternoon tea. With any luck, Della might have made drop scones.

  29

  WITH MIDDLEMARCH TUCKED IN THE crook of her arm, Emily set off around the house, destined for the swinging seat on the front verandah. Grandmother and Eunice had departed in the Packard on their monthly do-gooding pilgrimage to deliver fresh vegetables to the needy of Garnook. Eunice was the driver, a fact that Emily found secretly impressive. Not even her mother had a driving licence. More importantly, however, the absence of Eunice meant she had time on her hands. She was looking forwards to lolling on the swinging seat without fear of being harassed. With any luck she might even manage another chapter of Middlemarch.

  Flea was snoozing on the seat, and she shooed him off before sitting down. She opened the book, flicking over the pages, trying to find her place and thinking, for the hundredth time at least, about Lydia and Claudio’s kiss behind the pear tree. That she had not seen the kiss was true, but she was in no doubt that it had occurred. Why else had Claudio been avoiding her these last few days? Work, an inner voice responded, but she brushed it aside. If he’d wanted to come, he would have, even with Uncle Cec cracking the whip. She stared at the page: It was in that way that Dorothea came to be sobbing as soon as she was securely alone. She felt a rush of fellow feeling for Dorothea and a pressure at the back of her eyes that hinted at forthcoming tears.

  The seat rocked, and Lydia plonked down beside her.

  ‘Good god, still reading that dull book.’ She did not wait for an answer. ‘You’ve been avoiding me these last three days.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Emily lied.

  Lydia jumped up from the seat and grabbed her by the arm. ‘Doesn’t matter. Come on. I need you.’

  Resisting was not an option and, despite everything, once in Lydia’s orbit, she lost the will to do so. Pulled along in her aunt’s wake, she followed her to her bedroom. Once inside, Lydia kicked the door closed. Emily took in the unmade bed, and the clothes heaped on the corner chair. As always it was a mess: magazines were scattered on the floor. Some roses in a vase on the dressing table had dropped all their petals, and she caught the whiff of rank flower water. Harry’s photograph lay face down on the bedside table. She moved across and perched on the end of the bed.

  Lydia opened the door of her wardrobe, took something out and tossed it at her. ‘This should fit.’

  A white tennis dress landed in her lap. Her heart sank. ‘But I’m hopeless.’

  ‘Never mind. It’s only doubles and we need a fourth.’

  Doubles? With whom? And where? Not that it mattered – the ignominy would be the same, whatever the time and place.

  ‘I don’t have a racquet, or any shoes.’

  Lydia dived back into the cupboard and extracted a pair of sandshoes. ‘If they’re too big, you can stuff some cottonwool in the toes, and there are racquets galore in the hall cupboard.’

  She looked beseechingly at Lydia, but her aunt’s face was not encouraging.

  ‘Try it on.’ Lydia had her hands on her hips.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No, next week. Yes, of course now. We have to be at the McDougalls’ by three,’ she said, and walked over to the dre
ssing table, took out her silver cigarette case and lit a cigarette. Lydia opened the window to let out the smoke before turning back. ‘For heaven’s sake, take off your clothes. Or shall I undress you myself?’

  The thought of Lydia unbuttoning her blouse or tugging down her skirt was alarming enough to finally galvanise her into action. She unbuttoned her skirt and tried to gain time by folding it, until Lydia, alert to such delaying tactics, threw her cigarette out of the window and whisked the skirt from Emily’s hands.

  She tossed it on the floor. ‘Blouse,’ she ordered.

  It was just what she had been dreading, for it meant revealing Eunice’s cast-off bra, which was not only embarrassing due to its worn-out state but, after three days of constant wear, was beginning to smell. She had planned to wash it in the bathroom handbasin and hang it on a coathanger by her bedroom window to dry overnight. But she’d been afraid it would not dry and had delayed taking any action.

  Under Lydia’s observant eye, she unbuttoned her blouse and slid it off. She tried to fold her arms across her chest, partly to hide the bra but also because she felt naked and vulnerable. Lydia, however, was having none of it, and wrenched her arms open. At the sight of the bra, she said nothing. Instead she turned away and opened the top drawer of her chest of drawers. After rummaging for some time she returned with a creation of pale pink satin.

  ‘Here. Get rid of that ghastly old thing.’

  Emily took the pink bra. But now she did not have enough hands to undo the old one. Her brain had stopped working; she could only manage one thing at a time. Lydia grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around and began to undo Eunice’s bra. Feeling her aunt’s firm warm fingers on her skin, she had a flash of Phoebe from the pages of Fanny Hill and could not prevent an involuntary shudder.

  Lydia yanked at the bra strap. ‘Stay still.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The trick was to turn her body into a lump of wood, an object that did not feel, and could not respond. And her mind – she had to empty it of thoughts, for one thought led to another in disturbing ways. Soon the old bra was removed and the pink satin replacement expertly fitted.