A Proper Education for Girls (26 page)

He threw open the curtains of his bedroom and pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the window. He gazed out into the black abyss beyond. Perhaps he should go out for a walk. The night air might clear his head, and he had not been out of the house since rescuing Alice from Mr. Bellows's flying machine. He pulled open a window. So much had happened since that hour spent on the roof, he could hardly believe that only a day had passed. It seemed an age. He blinked, his eyes smarting in the cold air. On the opposite wing, the window of Mr. Talbot's study was still illuminated. Other than that single throbbing cell of life, the great house seemed deserted, its edifice shrouded in an almost impenetrable darkness. Mr. Blake shivered, and slammed the window closed. It was far too late, far too cold and dark, to go out for a walk.

He threw himself onto the bed and lay staring up at the cobwebs that festooned the cornice above his head. He found himself thinking about Alice, gliding swiftly away from him in Mr. Bellows's flying machine. Alice and her unexpected proposal of marriage. Alice and the look on her face as her father closed his study door on her that afternoon. He thought about Mrs. Cattermole and her unborn child, about Sluce 's mnemonic coat, about the photographs he had taken with Dr. Cattermole and which were still in Alice's possession. He thought about the bottle of ether, which he knew was downstairs in his dark tent if he chose to go looking for it. He pressed his hands over his eyes. His head was whirling, as though there was not a single thought he could hold on to long enough to
make sense of. He had no idea what he was supposed to do for the best. No doubt, he concluded gloomily, he would do nothing, as usual.

A gentle knock at the door brought him out of his stupor. At least it wasn't the knuckle-bruising rap of his employer. Perhaps it was Aunt Pendleton with a cup of tea. She was always most assiduous in providing him with refreshment. The photographer opened the door.

“May I come in?” whispered Alice. She held her candle aloft and looked quickly left and right, up and down the hall.

Alice was the last person he had expected to see. He closed the door behind her. Her hair was undone, he noticed. It looked as wiry as jute in the candlelight, but it shone with reds and golds he had not noticed before.

“What on earth are you wearing?” he said, before he could think of anything more appropriate to say.

“A cloak,” she replied. She held the collar close to her throat, as though fearing that the photographer might attempt to tear it off her.

“Have you been for a walk? I considered taking a turn around the grounds myself—”

“Mr. Blake,” interrupted Alice, “if I might be so bold as to ask you a question …”

“Of course,” said Mr. Blake. “Though I imagine that my answers will count for little in this most peculiar household.”

“In answering my question, you might find that your own curiosity is satisfied.”

Mr. Blake said nothing.

Alice clutched her cloak tighter. Her eyes were wide, he noticed, and her face pale in the candlelight. “Mr. Blake,” she said breathlessly, “I know which books I might look in to put my mind at rest, but there would always be room for doubt, in your mind at least. The opinion of a man as experienced as yourself, however, why, this would be quite irrefutable, would it not?”

Mr. Blake had no idea what she was talking about. “Indeed,” he said.

“Besides,” continued Alice rapidly. “You must see for yourself, not simply take my word for it.” She took a deep breath. “I am resolved,” she murmured. She lowered her eyes. Mr. Blake saw her lips move as though she were counting,
one … two … three …
and then all at once she cast the cloak off her shoulders.

Alice stood still and silent, as naked as a statue in a fountain, the rumpled cloak in a dark pool about her ankles.

“Tell me,” she said after a moment of unbearable silence. “Is this the body of a hermaphrodite? You have trained as a doctor. You have seen numerous unclothed women. You have lain with any number of them. You know their secret parts, their most intimate bodily secrets. You know what you should see when you look at them. Tell me now whether what you see before you is a woman, or a man, or some unnatural combination of both sexes. An abomination. A monster fit only for a museum.”

Mr. Blake gazed at his feet. “My dear Miss Talbot,” he murmured.

“Look at me,” she commanded. “Look at me and tell me what you see.”

In fact, what Mr. Blake saw when he looked up was a pale narrow body scarcely interrupted at all by the hills and valleys of breasts, waist, or hips. He saw square shoulders and strong arms with large hands. He saw a flat stomach and long, narrow-thighed legs. He saw a triangle of darkness at the root of her belly. He stared at that dark thicket of maidenhair. It appeared as featureless as all the others he had seen, though he knew that whatever secrets it might contain could not be fathomed from ten paces away.

“I think,” whispered Mr. Blake, “that you are not a man, by any means.”

It was not enough. “You need to see more.” Alice strode across the room and lay down upon his bed. She raised her knees and parted her legs, her eyes fixed upon the ceiling above. “You must make sure. Look. Look! You must be certain. Tell me what you see.
Tell me that you
know
I am a woman, not that you
think
I am not a man.”

Mr. Blake stood gazing at the floor.

Alice stared at him over the tops of her widely parted knees. “Come, Mr. Blake,” she said. “Tell me what I am. For both our sakes.”

M
R.
V
INE DECIDED THAT IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA
for Lilian to give the new arrivals in Kushpur drawing lessons.

“Both Miss Bell and Miss Forbes have expressed an interest in sketching,” he said. “Miss Forbes in particular has admired your paintings on several occasions.”

In fact, Miss Bell had merely commented on her own lack of skill with a pencil without intending that anything might be done about it, while Miss Forbes had wondered aloud in Mr. Vine's company why Mrs. Fraser kept so many paintings stacked about her parlor. Mr. Vine, however, had taken it upon himself to interpret these observations according to his own particular needs and, having generously offered Miss Bell and Miss Forbes as Lilian's pupils, he was now sitting in Lilian's parlor, staring, as though hypnotized, at the painting currently clamped to her easel. The subject was a vinelike plant with large flowers wound tightly around the trunk of a yellowish-colored tree. The bark had squeezed like butter against the ligature of creeper that encircled it, so that the image reminded Mr. Vine most forcefully of one of Mrs. Birchwoode's more opulent necklaces, a choker adorned with crimson silk flowers, which appeared to squeeze the jaundiced neck of its owner in exactly the same fashion.

“Can you not simply cut the flowers and bring them home to
paint?” he said. “Then you could send one of the bearers out. You wouldn't have to wander about out there yourself.”

“I like to paint the flora where I find them,” said Lilian. “One needs to see their habitat, their environment, their chosen location. If the subject is growing beside a stream, I also paint the stream. If it grows among rocks, I paint the rocks too. And I always include the surrounding vegetation. What if such plants and flowers should disappear forever? We would have no useful record of them without paintings such as these. Oh no, Mr. Vine, to answer your question simply, I must paint the plant where I find it. I can assure you that sending out a bearer would be a next-to-useless exercise. Surely you can see that?”

Mr. Vine gave a dejected grunt. Even before she had finished he regretted asking the question. The answer (so forcefully expressed, so confidently delivered) revealed to him how far Lilian had strayed into the thicket of independent thinking, a thicket so treacherous that unless he were able to hack through it to save her, she would find herself lost forever. She would become like the wicked witch in a children's fairy tale: ostracized, alone, wretched, and bitter.

His plan was a simple one, and simple plans were often the most effective. He was hoping that Lilian's obligations to Miss Bell and Miss Forbes would do something to keep her indoors (Miss Bell certainly was of too nervous a disposition to countenance wandering about the countryside in search of the perfect subject). In addition, the society of other young ladies might remind Lilian of the pleasures of gossip and fashion (and here the magistrate congratulated himself on realizing that Mrs. Birchwoode, Mrs. Toomey, and Mrs. Ravelston lacked the infectious effervescence of youth in their performance of these feminine offices). Finally, on the grounds that he was anxious to see how the ladies were enjoying their lessons, the magistrate now had an excuse to visit Lilian's bungalow on any morning he chose.

Lilian, however, was irritated to be saddled with the two young women. As she had not told Mr. Vine that she intended to leave in a matter of weeks, however, she could not think of a reason to refuse.
Besides, it would provide a distraction, at least. Both Miss Bell and Miss Forbes had yet to lose the modern and optimistic outlook they had brought with them from home, and Lilian did not find their company altogether disagreeable; but they were little more than girls and, egged on by the older
memsahibs
, were becoming increasingly obsessed with the marriage credentials of every Company man, every officer, every unmarried European of Lilian's acquaintance. They were also lacking in either dedication or proficiency when it came to painting and drawing.

“Is it always so hot in Kushpur?” said Miss Bell peevishly. She fanned her face with her hand. “I got up at five o'clock this morning simply in the hope that I would have at least an hour or two at a temperature that was less than intolerable. Mr. Vine said the thermometer in the
kutcherry
yesterday stood at eighty-six degrees!”

“It will get much hotter, I can assure you,” said Miss Forbes knowledgeably.

“It's no wonder that the natives are always asleep. They can't have the energy for anything else. Neither do I, but Aunt Ravelston keeps sending me out on rides or to see Fanny Birchwoode for tea. And I am covered in these horrible itchy spots because of the heat.” Miss Bell lowered her voice. “My corset chafes them terribly.” She scratched at a mosquito bite that stood out on her forehead like a caste mark. “We have an infestation of muskrats beneath the house, too. Muskrats! Can you imagine anything more horrible?”

“It's a common occurrence,” said Lilian.

Miss Bell's rosebud mouth became a pout—an expression Lilian imagined would be habitual within a few years spent in a place like Kushpur. “I've never seen a muskrat, but I assume they're quite large. My uncle, Mr. Ravelston, came into my room last night saying he was looking for one of these dreadful creatures that he had reason to suspect had actually entered the house. He said it might even be hiding in my bed, and he lifted the sheet where I lay.”

She looked at Miss Forbes, but the captain's sister was surreptitiously admiring her own reflection in the surface of Lilian's teapot.

“How I wish I could go home,” whispered Miss Bell, suddenly
tearful. “Don't you ever wish for such a thing, Mrs. Fraser? Especially now Mr. Fraser has … I mean, surely you can't actually
want
to remain in Kushpur without him?”

“Mrs. Fraser likes it here,” said Miss Forbes.

“Do you?” Miss Bell looked at Lilian, her blue eyes round with disbelief.

“Yes,” said Lilian.

“But how
can
you?”

“My recollection of home is of a cruel place. A place of tyranny and sadness, filled with selfish and pitiless men,” said Lilian bitterly. “I might want to leave Kushpur, but I have no wish to leave India and no desire to go back home.” But even as she spoke Lilian knew that this was not true. There was one memory of home that was very different to those dark and pain-filled thoughts, one memory that burned as brightly as a comet in her mind. It was the only joyous memory she had of the place, though it was shadowed by the sadness of love and separation. “I don't miss home at all,” she said. “But I miss my sister terribly. She is dearer to me than any man, any husband could ever be. I would go home only to fetch Alice.”