The Rising of Bella Casey Read online

  ‘He shouldn’t be kept from his books,’ Bella complained. ‘You’re only encouraging him in rebellion.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Ma said.

  ‘St Barnabas may not be a grand seat of learning but a school of a mediocre tenor is better than no school at all.’

  ‘The Master singles him out and makes no allowances for his ailments,’ Ma would say.

  ‘I promised Pappie I would see to it he got his schooling.’

  ‘Oh yes, my lady, we know all about your promises. If your poor father could see …’

  And then the old argument would be stirred up and he would be forgotten.

  ‘If you’re so worried about his education,’ Ma said, ‘fetch down your books and teach him yourself.’

  *

  Bella gave him lists to spell and tested him in the evenings as she wielded a hissing iron. She made him rattle off the capitals of the world while she folded the laundry. She would mark off poems for him to read aloud and parse and analyze.

  ‘You must improve on your comprehension,’ she would warn, ‘you can’t rely on memory alone.’

  But it was a constant battle. If she wasn’t quarrelling with his mother, it was baby Susan – her cough, how late she was to walk, her sacrosanct naps. In the schoolroom, where she had three dozen infants in her care, Bella had always been in charge and the pattern of patience. But at home her attention was fractured by just one. And it was never him. It rankled still, the childish hurt of it, his first expulsion.

  One afternoon she set him a reading exercise from the Poetry Treasury. He loved that book, large as the bible with its gold-leafed pages and red leather covers. He was to read Tennyson’s ‘The Brook’.

  ‘Quietly now, to yourself,’ Bella instructed, ‘and make sure you recognise and understand every word. Then later, when I’ve put Susan down, I’ll examine you on it.’

  Susan was on her lap, fractious, something to do with her teeth. He sat at the kitchen table, while Bella cradled Susan in her arms, crooning her into slumber. He worked for several minutes in silence. But he couldn’t concentrate with all those lovey-dovey sounds Bella was making.

  I come from haunts of coot and hern … he started to declaim.

  ‘Pipe down, now, Jack,’ Bella said putting her fingers to her lips, ‘for I’ve only just got Susan off.’

  And sparkle out among the fern … The music of the words made him want to sing them aloud.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me, Jack?’ she hissed, ‘You can do your recitation out loud in a little while.’

  He shot her a glare. Wasn’t it her idea to bring the schoolroom home? And wasn’t he only doing as he was bid?

  I wind about, and in and out, with here a blossom sailing … he started again but this time at full tilt.

  ‘Make him stop, Mother, would you?’

  For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever …

  He was shouting now and Susan had started grizzling. Bella laid her carefully in the bassinet. Then she straightened and came at him. For a minute he thought she was going to strike him. In one swift movement she stretched across the table, whipped the book from under his nose. She waved it in the air showily, then placed it on the chair and sat on it.

  ‘Give it back to me,’ he yelled.

  Susan added her own aggrieved cry to the clamour.

  ‘I’ll give it back when you’re ready to behave yourself!’

  ‘Ah Ma!’

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake, give the child his book, Bella.’

  ‘I will not,’ she said, her eyes fiery. ‘Not until he shows me a bit of respect.’

  Respect, was it? He’d show her. He leapt up and ran around to Bella’s side of the table. He ducked behind her and locked his arms around her chest. With all his might, he tipped her back, chair and all, so that only two of the legs were on the floor. She made to tamp down her skirts to stop them riding up at this precarious angle.

  ‘Hand it over,’ he hissed in her ear.

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Hand over the book first,’ he said.

  ‘Mother,’ she appealed. ‘Make him let me go.’

  ‘Jack,’ Ma said warningly.

  ‘I’ll let you go,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you go alright and see how you’ll like it.’

  He released his grip and stepped back. The chair teetered for a moment before Bella went toppling backwards. She reached out her arm to catch the edge of the table, but the cloth puckered at her flailing grasp and with a clinking jostle, it brought milk jug and sugar bowl to the floor with her. The jug broke in a temper. Bella was still caught in the upended chair, her legs in the air, her skirts all up around her. This time he saw everything, the gap of flesh between her stays and her bloomers, her dimpled thigh. He felt a hot rush of victory.

  ‘If your Bugler could see you now,’ he said with some satisfaction.

  ‘Jack!’ she cried as she tried to right herself, but one of her feet was caught in the rungs of the chair and she was hampered by her skirts.

  ‘Mother, he attacked me!’

  ‘Give over you two,’ Ma said. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

  She surveyed the broken jug, the spilt milk.

  ‘Help me up, Mother,’ Bella pleaded and held out her hand.

  ‘Help yourself up,’ Ma said and went back to her mopping up.

  He leaned over Bella, still seated in the upturned chair but with her head on the floor and her feet in the air. He scrabbled for the book beneath her skirts and pulled it free. He went back to his place at the table and putting his head down he stared blindly at the book, trying to quiet his thumping heart. He watched surreptitiously as Bella tried to right herself, crouching on all fours first, then hauling herself to standing. Her hair had come loose from her combs. Her skirts were stained with milk, her blouse was in disarray. A button had popped in the struggle, leaving a gape at her breast.

  ‘Look at me,’ she said to him. ‘You have me ruined.’

  And then the tears came. A great dam-burst, racking sobs that seemed to come from the pit of her stomach. Her face, when he dared to look, a mottled mess. He stared down at the Treasury. The back cover had come away from the spine in the tussle and was hanging on by the merest thread. Bella’s Treasury torn in two …

  He stoops to retrieve the ball of scrunched-up paper from the carpet at his feet. He tries to smoothe the pages out, to undo the damage, but the delicate carbon between the sheets has been irretrievably torn. A day’s work destroyed, by a fit of bad temper. No great loss, in truth. What use were all these memories to him when he could make no sense of them? Bella had been right. It wasn’t his memory that was at fault, it was his understanding. He would have to start again.

  CADBY

  CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

  When Bella shut the street door of the new house on Rutland Place on May 1st, 1893, she felt a rush of victory. This was the fresh start she had longed for – Nick, discharged from the army and home permanently, her little family together. He’d secured a position as a porter with the Great Northern Railways, thanks to a letter from his commanding officer which described him as honest, steady and sober. She surveyed her belongings safely housed inside. The two-leafed mahogany table from her teacher’s quarters, her framed prints, an iron bedstead with a green sateen eiderdown, a rocking chair she’d purchased from Rafters’ Auction Rooms on the never-never, a horse-hair sofa with wine trim, her china wedding bowl with scalloped edges the colour of clotted cream. But her proudest possession was a vertical Cadby, on which she’d made a down-payment at Butler’s Instruments. It would not have been a proper home without a piano, and though it was in the plain mission style, it was finished in a mottled burr walnut and had a most pleasing timbre.

  Nick came in from the scullery. He had to bend for the lintel was exceedingly low. Dressed in his civvies, he seemed lesser, somehow, and she worried he might feel reduced by their little kingdom. There was a spacious yard, big enough for two washing lines, but after the broad expanses of the p
arade ground, would he feel hemmed in here?

  ‘Well?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s a new billet, Bel, is all,’ he said.

  ‘For you, maybe,’ she told him, ‘but this is your home now, Nick, our home.’

  To celebrate she’d bought Eccles cake in the Miss Edwards’ shop on Cavendish Row. She sat Susan on a butter-box which she had covered with a piece of red velvet to pretty it up.

  ‘Well, look at this fancy grub, Susie,’ Nick said when she brought in the tray. ‘Bought cake, no less.’

  He whisked her on to his lap; Nick’s gestures with the children would always be broad. He’d catch them from behind and swing them in the air until they were dizzy, or tickle them unmercifully.

  ‘Look, Susie, look,’ Nick said as Bella cut up a piece of the cake. ‘Mama’s going to make you eat crushed flies.’

  ‘Oh Nick,’ she chastised.

  ‘What?’ Nick said. ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll have none of your barrack-room humour here, thank you very much,’ she said.

  There was a muffled cry from upstairs. The new baby waking. Christened Bella, but called Babsie. That was Nick’s pet name for her.

  ‘So as not to confuse her with you, Bel,’ he had decreed. ‘There’s only one Isabella in this household and that, my sweet, is you.’

  But things had not always been so sweet regarding Babsie. When Bella had found herself pregnant again, she had thought this baby would be the lucky one. There would be none of the dread associated with Susan, no whiff of illegitimacy to haunt her, no ugly ultimatums to be delivered. She had been dying to break the good news to Nick, waiting anxiously for his next leave, deliciously rehearsing in her mind how she would tell him. But once he arrived, she found herself holding back. Even after three years of marriage, she was still not quite sure of Nick. She blamed it on his soldiering. His intermittent leaves home meant they were more separated sweethearts than man and wife. They might have known continuity but there was no ease in it. Every time he came home, Nick was like a stranger, someone she had to reacquaint herself with, as if they were constantly replaying their courtship but never reaching engagement. She found herself discovering traits in him as if she were a new bride. He did all his own sewing for one. It was a skill he’d picked up in the ranks. He could stitch a hem and darn a rip quicker than any girl. The first time she saw him bent over a brass button whipping the needle back and forth she almost laughed for it seemed an oddly feminine occupation, but she was grateful for these unexpected gifts. They reassured her; a man adept at needlework must surely have refinement lodged somewhere in his soul. But other discoveries were less welcome. Nick might have looked neat as a bandbox but when he undressed he left his clothes where they fell, like scarlet rubble on the floor. His presence in the bed was a surprise to her, he sprawled so. He was a restless sleeper, bucking like an unbroken horse when he turned, snorting into wakefulness; in the mornings he hawked up phlegm. His smell, of smoke and ale houses, all had to be learned again and accommodated. And then he would be gone and she would be left with Mother − always more peevish after Nick’s visits − a widow in all but name.

  It was the evening before Nick’s return to Aldershot and she still hadn’t announced the new baby. She decided she would make an occasion of it, to make a distinction between this annunciation and the last. Nick was out playing bagatelle with his pals, so in the late afternoon she left Susan with Mother and made her way to Byrne’s on Buckingham Street. She would cook calf’s liver for his tea for Nick was partial to it and then she would tell him. She was in a merry mood and flushed with the bloom of anticipation. Even Mr Byrne, the butcher, noticed, and when she told him who the liver and lights was for, he patted her hand and said, ‘He’s the lucky man, then, Missus.’

  Emboldened by the sensation of well-being, she stepped on to the street and straight into the person of Leeper. She felt her stomach turn. What was he doing here, completely outside his quotidian territory? It had been three years since she had seen him, not since that last day at the schoolroom, but all the old oppressions – the menace of his presence, her own puniness in the face of it – rose up in her.

  ‘Miss Casey,’ he said and doffed his bowler for he was in street clothes.

  ‘It’s Mrs Beaver, Reverend Leeper,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, ‘please forgive me, Mrs Beaver. It’s just that you will always be Miss Casey to me. ‘

  She was carrying a soaking bag of offal. It seemed an offence, somehow, some indiscretion in plain view.

  ‘I trust you are keeping well?’

  ‘Very well,’ she said emphatically, then remembering her manners added a thank you.

  ‘Well,’ he said expansively fingering the rim of his hat, ‘I must say the married state appears to be suiting you.’

  He glanced at her appraisingly and she was forced to thank him again though she knew the treachery of his compliments. But she was glad of her burnished hair and her high colour – she had the luck never to look plain in pregnancy – even if her errand was mundane. She found herself perusing his features now in the same way as she had guiltily examined Susan’s, for any trace of him in her. Thanks be to God she didn’t have Susan with her. He, of all people, must never set eyes on the child for fear that his greedy gaze might recognise the kinship.

  ‘And your baby?’ he asked, ‘we hear you had a little girl.’

  He used the royal plural as if putting himself up there at the right hand of the Lord.

  ‘Our Susan is a baby no longer,’ she replied. ‘She’s coming up for three.’ As you well know.

  ‘Is she indeed?’ he said with an air of rumination as if he were doing the arithmetic in his head.

  ‘And we,’ Bella said with a declarative tone for two could play at that game, ‘are expecting our second.’

  The moment it was out, she felt a pang of betrayal. That Leeper should know the news before Nick, made her feel utterly abject. How was it that he had the power to turn every joyous thing in her life sour? Suddenly she wanted to be away, for fear of what other unforced admissions she might let slip.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s very good news, altogether, Mrs Beaver. My congratulations.’

  ‘I must be hurrying along now, Reverend Leeper, for my husband will be wondering where I’ve got to. I just stepped out to get some victuals for him. He’s home on leave from Aldershot …’

  ‘Still soldiering then, your husband? ‘He leaned in close to her. ‘But then, hasn’t he the joy of a furlough baby to look forward to?’

  The way he said it – a furlough baby – it made the new child sound like the fruit of some squalid encounter, the product of some hurried lust. Then he changed tack, pinning her with his conversation.

  ‘You’ll be glad to hear,’ he went on, ‘that your successor Miss Blennerhassett is doing very nicely. A charming girl and willing, too.’

  Willing – every word out of his mouth reeked of perfidy. Once, Bella thought, he had probably described me so.

  ‘The children are devoted to her and she’s most effective in whipping in those fees.’

  Bella felt a tremor of regret for Miss Blennerhassett. She had met her only once when the new teacher had arrived to inspect the teacher’s quarters. Inspect was the word for it, for the young woman eyed up everything unashamedly, including Bella’s encumbrance. Bella, in reply, had flourished her hand with the gold band. Miss Blennerhassett was a pert young thing with a high colour, dark tresses and a slender figure. Bella had wondered if she should warn her, but how would she have put it? There wasn’t civilised language for what she had to say. Perhaps, she reasoned, Leeper had learned his lesson. Anyway, Miss Blennerhassett, being of a different nature, might not ignite his ugly passion and then any prophecies of hers would have been for naught. But in truth, even at that late stage, she was still afraid of Leeper and what he might be able to do to her.

  ‘… and,’ Leeper continued, ‘she has qualified for two increments already a
nd is studying for her promotion examinations. Oh yes, we shall have our Miss Blennerhassett with us for a long time. She intends to make a vocation of her teaching …’ He smiled at Bella then, pityingly. ‘But then, some of us have other callings, isn’t that so, Mrs Beaver?’

  And with that he doffed his hat and with a clipped good day he left. Bella felt the street spin around her and had to sit, choosing the steps of a house to sink on, though it was an indecorous pose. But her heart was thumping loudly and she thought that she might faint. She had never before been prone to the vapours, but it took her a full ten minutes to compose herself. When she did, she scurried home as if fleeing from the scene of a crime.

  ‘Bella, is that you?’

  The voice that greeted her was Nick’s. She walked down the hallway with a tiny clutch of fear in her breast. She turned in at the parlour door and met a clouded brow. She had never seen such a thundery aspect on Nick’s face and he had a dishevelled air, his jacket hanging open with his vest showing and flecks of tobacco on his trousers. He stood swaying by the mantel.

  ‘And where have you been?’ he demanded pointing to the clock which showed ten minutes after six.

  ‘I’ve been off to buy your tea is all,’ she said and raised the package as proof.

  ‘And how long does that take, pray tell?’

  ‘I got held up.’

  ‘You did and all,’ he said, ‘your mother says you’ve been gone an age.’

  Wasn’t that an unexpected alliance, Bella thought, her Nick and Mother ranged on one side against her. ‘And aren’t you all kitted out for a woman just out doing the messages?’

  She’d worn her good maroon skirt and a blouse of duck-egg blue, so that she would look her best when she delivered her news.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t have something else on your mind?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t you, indeed!’