The Rising of Bella Casey Page 8

  *

  That morning, Miss Quill had decided that the children’s heads must be scoured for lice. As they worked through sixty crawling heads in the downstairs hall, Bella’s limbs ached beneath her costume with their new brutish knowledge. But there was no manifestation on her face as to what had befallen her. She thanked heaven that Jack was no longer among their number − he had passed on to St Barnabas School for Boys – for she doubted she could have dissembled in front of him. She executed her duties in glassy rote. But the children knew no different. Their calls and demands were just the same. They had to be taught to sing their tables and count their abacus. Somehow, she struggled through the morning. By the afternoon she was sufficiently composed to forget herself for long stretches at a time as if her tasks were being performed by another. All might have proceeded as normal had Elspeth Parker not raised her hand after the lunch break. She was a cheeky one, often sent as an ambassador when others were not bold enough.

  ‘Yes, Elspeth, what is it?’

  ‘Is it true, Miss?’

  ‘Is what true, Elspeth?’

  She leaned up to Bella conspiratorially and whispered in her ear. ‘Are you going to be married, Miss?’

  She felt her cheeks scalding. As if the child could divine the terrible disgrace she was nursing beneath her sober dress and tamed hair.

  ‘What’s that, Elspeth?’

  ‘Are you going to get married, Miss?’ she asked, brassily, this time.

  The class tittered.

  ‘Don’t be impertinent, Elspeth Parker. Now back to your desk, if you please.’

  ‘Me and Bessie …’ she started.

  ‘Bessie and I …’

  ‘We saw you stepping out with a solder, Miss.’

  There was another ripple of amusement. How cruel they seemed in that moment, not innocent at all but malevolently knowing.

  ‘He was all dressed up. My brother says he was a lancer.’

  Tears suddenly sprouted. She had not wept throughout her ordeal. There had been a dry tempest of shame, but no tears. Now, there was an abundance of them, so much so that she feared she might drown in them, so without further ado, she rapped the desk with her cane and dismissed the class early. Leaving the stove lit and the schoolroom in disarray, she fled to her rooms and wept until she could weep no longer.

  It was in this state, blurred and sodden with grief that Leeper found her. In the grip of her distress, she had left the door of her quarters ajar. She raised her head from her cradling arms. What a sight she must have been, her face blotchy and ruined, her cheeks feverish and damp.

  ‘Have you entirely forgotten your manners, Miss Casey? Or do you no longer stand when your pastor enters the room?’

  Slowly, disbelievingly, astounded by her own docility, Bella rose to her feet, while rubbing fiercely at her face with the sleeve of her dress and trying to hush her weeping hair.

  ‘I am appalled …’ he began, then stopped. He dropped his eyes as if the sight of Bella distressed him. As well it might, she thought. But, once again she was mistaken. ‘I arrive to find the door to the street thrown wide, the schoolroom deserted, slates thrown on the floor, the fire still alight. The whole place might have gone up in flames.’

  ‘I was feeling poorly, Reverend Leeper,’ she said dully.

  ‘You can feel poorly on your own time, Miss Casey,’ he said, pulling out his fob watch and tapping the glass ostentatiously. ‘It is not yet half past the hour and already your charges are milling about on Great Britain Street. Unless I am greatly mistaken, three o’clock is the hour when the infant classes let out, is it not, Miss Casey?’

  ‘Yes Reverend,’ she replied. She must, on no account, aggravate him.

  ‘I consider this a gross dereliction of duty,’ he said. He had walked to the window, still clutching the watch and studying its face intently. Then he strolled back and stood on the hateful spot, the place where … in her mind’s eye she could see a version of her ruined self still lying there.

  ‘Sit, Miss Casey,’ he commanded. She sat, gratefully.

  ‘Not only,’ he continued as if he had the speech all arranged in his head, ‘not only have you deserted your post, but you have allowed your pupils to roam the streets like urchins. What would have happened if an inspector had called today with neither pupils nor teacher in evidence on the premises? What would he have made of that?’

  He paused. Now, Bella thought, now he will make some reference to the loathsome events of the night before.

  ‘It pains me to say this, Miss Casey …’

  Now, she thought again, now.

  ‘But your display last evening of what I can only describe as animal lust, I found both deeply shocking and downright degrading. You lured me into an intimate association with no consideration for my elevated feelings, which I had declared to you in trust. Knowing that you have been a torment to me, Madam, your conduct is inexcusable.’

  His face was on fire, his brow beaded. But then his voice softened.

  ‘I believe you are not the kind of teacher who is fit to be in control of young, uncorrupted minds, but …’

  He raised a hand as she opened her mouth to say something, but that is far as she got. All her impulses seemed laggardly and slow.

  ‘… in view of your unblemished record so far, I will not take this matter any further. But should there be any repeat of such wantonness, the Guardians will have to be informed. And believe me, Miss Casey, there will certainly be no reprieve then.’

  She could scarce believe her ears. How had he turned events on their head so that she had been cast as the wanton one, a – she hesitated to say this even in the sanctuary of her own thoughts – a whore. How?

  ‘I will be keeping a strict eye on you, Miss Casey,’ he said with such force that his spittle flew. ‘And should there be even the hint of further impropriety, as God is my judge, I shall drive you out myself.’

  He snapped his watch shut and lodged it in his pocket. Then he marched out and down the stairs like an executioner who had delivered a harsh but just verdict.

  This, then, was the worst. Not the night previous, although memories of that would come jaggedly and unbidden as she laboured through her days. The scene seemed engraved on her eyelids so that even when she lay down to sleep, the crush of his body against hers and the awful pulse of his appetite invaded her dreams in lurid and sudden bouts, shocking her into wakefulness, her heart drumming and her brow soaked. She was condemned to relive her undoing, night after night. Meanwhile, the Leeper (she refused to call him Reverend), while keeping his distance in person, was on the warpath about the school records. Knowing he might swoop at any time to check on her books made her sick with anguish. She could not concentrate on even the most menial duties. She would make terrible mistakes – once entering Fees Withheld in the wrong column, which meant she had to tear off the offending folios and redo a whole week’s entries. There were blots and stains on the ledger, the latter from her frustrated tears, the former as if the pen, in sympathy, wept. Anticipating Leeper’s judgement of her work seemed to heighten her capacity to blunder and sometimes the results were so blotchy in presentation, and patchy in nature, that had one of her pupils handed it in, she would have dismissed them as lazy and slovenly. But the more he castigated her – Miss Casey, what, pray tell, is this figure here? Miss Casey, where are last week’s attendance sheets? – the more inept she became. He turned her into a dunce in her own schoolroom.

  She found her temper shortening, even with the children. One day when little Cissy Roberts pestered her once too often could she please go to the lavatory, she was so consumed with getting through her appointed lesson unobstructed that she ignored the child and the inevitable happened – a large pool on the schoolroom flags. Another inadvertent victim was Alfred Baxter. Alfie was a dim-witted child, soft and fat. He was slaving over his headline template and having trouble with his p’s and q’s. Poor child, he always turned them backwards. Bella remembered halting before him. He was bent over t
he page, his little tongue edging out over his bottom lip in avid concentration.

  ‘What did we say about the P, Alfred?’ she asked.

  ‘P goes right, Miss.’

  ‘And Alfred, which is your right hand?’

  The stupid child raised his left.

  Looking down at the unseemly page in front of him, the unmitigated mess of it and Alfie’s trusting face so full of sunny certainty gazing up at her, Bella felt a surge of anger. She had the teacher’s pointer in her hand; she had been using it to point at the alphabet inscribed on the board.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ she ordered. Alfie looked up at her. Confused. Always confused.

  ‘The other one,’ she barked. She raised the pointer and brought it down hard.

  She would never forget the look on the child’s face. Not of pain though she had succeeded in making him howl and had brought up a red weal on his little palm. But of betrayal. Like many of her pupils, Alfie felt the belt at home. Bella was acquainted with his father, a brooding bully of a man, whose children would run into mouse-holes to escape him. There would be many actions she would take in her life that she would be ashamed of, but if there was to be a Judgement Day, Bella knew that this transgression – the striking of Alfie Baxter – was the worst.

  MANOEUVRES

  The blow brought Bella to her senses. She might not have been schooled in the uncouth lessons of biology, but she had missed her monthly and she knew the import of that. She had seen this happen once before at the College. To her bête noir, Prudence Collier, no less. One minute Miss Collier was in the full bloom of love with Her Neville – which Bella saw in capitals so partial was Prudence to repeating it – the next she had been sent down in disgrace. Neville Cardew was a scrivener’s clerk at the Custom House; he was going to climb the ladder of Her Majesty’s Service, reaching such heights that he might well move into the Vice-Regal Lodge and be running the country any day now, according to Prudence. On she wittered, imagining herself already as the wife of a Castle functionary. Then at the height of her fancy, she disappeared, on account of what Miss Swanzy called a family emergency. When Bella had reported this to Lily, she had guessed immediately the true reason.

  ‘I fear,’ Lily said, ‘that the family emergency might be of Prudence’s own making.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ Bella remembered saying, still the greenhorn.

  ‘Oh Bella, her family took her before her encumbrance began to show,’ Lily said as if explaining some complicated lesson to a child.

  ‘Poor Prudence,’ Bella had said then, without thinking. For Prudence’s absence would improve her daily life no end. There would be no more sniping, no snide remarks. But she had been sorry, sorry for the loss of the fine life Prudence could have had, the good education gone west, the prospects of betterment banished. And she remembered what Lily had said, a rueful valediction.

  ‘One slip, Bella, is all it takes.’

  It was time to make haste.

  The Liverpools, she discovered, were to play on the bandstand on the Carlyle Pier the following Sunday. On the pretext of taking the air on the pier at Kingstown she donned her style and walked as far as Merrion Square to catch the tram. As arranged she met Clarice Hamilton at the stop. Clarrie had been at the Model School with her but had failed to reach Final Standard. Instead she was sent to train up under Madame Felice, the milliner’s on Wicklow Street. Bella had lost touch with her until she had visited the shop one day shortly after she had started work and was ordering a hat – a dove-grey toque, she remembered – and who was serving behind the counter but Clarrie Hamilton.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Clarrie had said after they had done their catching up. ‘Mrs Faylix has been very good to me though she’s a bit uppity if you ask me. Not French at all but she likes to drop a bit of the parlay vu.’ This all delivered in loud tones in the body of the shop. Clarrie had never been what you’d call discreet. ‘She’s from Newfoundland Street, if you please.’

  Their acquaintanceship had persisted from that day, and on certain occasions – such as this one – Clarrie’s brand of brave jollity was exactly what was called for.

  ‘Aren’t you the dark horse, Bella Casey?’ Clarrie cooed when Bella told her of her plan. ‘I never imagined you’d take a fancy to a soldier!’

  She nudged Bella in the ribs – she had always been robust in her expression and not at all lady-like. Poor Clarrie was no oil painting. She had a long angular face, a tall awkward build and decidedly big feet.

  ‘Don’t worry, Bella, if we run into him, I’ll make myself scarce.’

  She gave Bella a rum wink, delighted to be in on the conspiracy.

  ‘Sure isn’t my auntie sick and I must visit her, isn’t that what I’m to say? Oh, I love this,’ she said as they mounted the tram.

  Bella was glad of Clarrie’s uncomplicated company as they drove out to the sea. The day wore a blue bonnet that matched her own, though up on the upper deck it was so windy they had to hold their hats on their laps. The sea when they came upon it was frilled with white. Clarrie chattered on beside Bella, commenting on what people wore – the ladies’ hats in particular – but also threading her own ambitions for the day into the conversation. Wouldn’t it be great if they were to bump into Lance Corporal Beaver? How thrilled she was that she might be the agent of such an assignation, and wouldn’t it be just the ticket if he were to have a soldier companion with him?

  ‘They always have a less handsome friend,’ Clarrie said.

  Rather sadly, Bella thought.

  The regimental players were filing up the steps to take their places as she and Clarrie hunted for a free seat among the white timber deckchairs scattered on the green. Clarrie snaffled two and positioned them to the side of the bandstand so as to enjoy an unobstructed view.

  ‘Which one is he?’ Clarrie hissed in her ear. Bella surreptitiously pointed.

  ‘No wonder you’re in such a tizzy, isn’t he a darling man? So tall and don’t you just love the get-up of him? And look, look,’ she said and pointed out something Bella had not noticed. ‘He has a tattoo there on his left wrist. I hope he hasn’t got another girl’s name embroidered there for that would be hard to wear. I thought it was only sailors as had tattoos, though I suppose since he’s in colours, that’s what you might call a military tattoo …’

  Bella could see those around smiling at their expense for Clarrie had a voice that carried. Because she was rambunctious by nature, it was sometimes difficult to be sure if people were laughing with her or at her. But, whichever it was, she brought a touch of gaiety even if, sometimes, it was at her own expense. Luckily the band struck up then – The Radetsky March – and the rest of Clarrie’s monologue was drowned out.

  Sitting there in the benign mid-summer sunshine with half the world streaming by, arm-in-arm, and the other half gathered around the bandstand tapping their feet to the merry music and children skipping to the beat or rolling hoops, the day rinsed and clean, the sea sparkling and everyone in their Sunday best, it was easier for Bella to believe that some good might come of all of this. Though, inwardly, she quailed.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll come this way,’ Clarrie said excitedly in a pause in the music. ‘Give him a wave.’

  But before Bella had a chance to respond, Clarrie shot up and raised her own two arms like a woman drowning, so that the Corporal would have to have been blind to miss her. He waved doubtfully at the apparition that was Clarrie, only relaxing, Bella thought, when he saw that she was not alone. At the first break in the performance, he laid down his brass and made his way through the scatter of chairs towards them. Bella braced herself. Not alone had she to charm this mercurial man, she had to ensnare him. She wasn’t equipped for this. Then she thought of her condition and quelled her doubts. Needs must. At least, she had already felt the quickening of desire for the Corporal and wasn’t it better that she felt some stirring for him, than nothing at all? It raised her above some stylish-dressed pusher on the street with an eye for a uniform. Still, wh
at she was planning required a dimming of her heart in deference to her intellect. She had to bend this man to her will. She had to feign the innocence of the barefoot girl she had been when they first met in the kitchen of Innisfallen Parade and have him wed her before she began to show. Turn him into a keeper, as Clarrie had said, but she only knew half the story. Bella was soiled merchandise – that is what Clarrie would have said had she known for she did not put a tooth in things – and from now on she would have to act accordingly, until she could don the habit of a wife.

  ‘Bella Casey!’ the Corporal announced bold as you like – almost as loudly as Clarrie trumpeting in her ear.

  Bella showed a cherry smile, courtesy of Clarrie who had pinked her lips on the top of the tram.

  ‘If it isn’t Corporal Beaver!’ she replied taking up his tone of bravado. He did look a treat in his dress uniform, a red coatee with blue-roll collar and cuffs, his black breeches trimmed with white, a yellow rope across his chest on which his bugle was slung, his buttons and his epaulettes all golden gleam. She saw the enormity of the task ahead of her and felt her own inadequacy in the face of it.

  ‘Enjoying the music?’ the Corporal asked. ‘That last one was our regimental quick march, “Here’s to the Maiden”.’