The World Within (30 page)

Emily shuts her eyes, but she can’t close her ears and block out the voices, which pipe up as soon as the teacher’s footsteps have died away.

“Astonishing how
some people
are brought up, isn’t it?” Emily recognizes the languid voice as Lydia’s.

Titters greet this remark.

Lydia goes on, “If I had underwear like that, heaven forbid, I wouldn’t dream of displaying it to the world, would you? And fancy wearing stays instead of a proper corset — when you’re as flat as a board, you need all the help you can get!”

More titters and someone says, “Lyddy, you’re so droll.”

Emily grits her teeth, but she forces herself to stay silent. They’re not worth her scorn.

Another voice pipes up. “I know something you don’t know.”

“What?”

“Harriet has a beau.”

“No!”

“You hush, little sister.”

“Come on, Harriet, spill the beans. Is he handsome?”

“He has very nice eyes. And he dances divinely.”

“What about you, Lydia? Have you had any
special
dancing partners?”

“Oh, dancing.” Lydia’s drawling enunciation invests the word with world-weary boredom. “I can see that dancing with boys is exciting for you children, but I’ve had other fish to fry.”

Squeaks of delight follow this announcement. “Oh, do tell, Lyddy.”

“It’s not for your tender ears,
mes enfants
,” she replies loftily, which has the presumably desired effect of inciting her audience to a frenzy of protests and questions.

“Enough!” She silences them. “Never mind about me, what about our new friend, Miss
Brontee
? Has she any admirers, I wonder? Some rustic swain who’s drawn to that ‘Oirish’ accent? Who finds that natural I’ve-just-come-in-from-a-hayfield look irresistible?”

Gales of laughter greet these witticisms.

Emily wishes she had the power to launch a thunderbolt at them all.

The next moment the door opens and a sharp voice says, “Young ladies, if this noise does not cease immediately, you will all receive a black mark.” The door shuts, but there are no footsteps, suggesting that the teacher is hovering outside to check that her threat has had the desired effect.

Surprisingly to Emily, it does — there are one or two muffled giggles, but no one says another word, and soon the room fills with the deep regular breathing of people sleeping.

In the dark the pattern of garlands on the bedroom curtains looks like stripes.

Or bars.

Oh, Emily, what have you done?

From misplaced pride and a desire to please Papa, she has trapped herself in this alien place among these strangers.

If only Mary were here …

She suddenly sees what it must have meant to Charlotte to discover two kindred spirits here. No wonder she grew so close to them, even to Ellen. She would hardly have been able to help herself.

Her own behavior toward Charlotte over that business of sharing her secret with Ellen now seems petty and shameful. Why couldn’t she have been as generous to Charlotte as Anne was to her about Mary? Why couldn’t she have been glad that her sister had made a friend instead of holding on to a ridiculous grudge for far too long and cutting herself off from Charlotte?

Emily’s heart twists with a sudden pain — to have realized this now when it’s not possible to make amends. For here Charlotte is on the other side of the impenetrable barrier that divides teachers from pupils. And Emily is alone.

So. Just at this moment she has only one option — herself. Tomorrow is her birthday and she will be seventeen. Time enough to become self-reliant. And after all, it’s not the first time she’s been in this situation.

She runs her fingers over the raised scar on her arm.

She managed to cope with the dog bite without anyone’s help. By exerting her willpower, she endured that horrible physical and mental suffering without giving herself away. She faced the prospect of death … and survived.

Surely this can’t be as bad?

As long as they leave her alone …

“Trappist monk.”

“Vestal virgin.”

Having delivered these sallies, Lydia and her ally, Harriet Lister, go sniggering down the corridor.

Emily doesn’t even turn her head. She is learning not to care. If those loathsome creatures choose to amuse themselves with snide remarks at her expense, what does it matter?

In the letter that she’s writing to Mary, she tells her friend what’s just happened.

She can’t write to Anne — it hurts too much to think of home and her sister and what they would be doing if she were there right now. And she doesn’t want Anne to worry about her. But Mary knows what it’s like here — she’s endured it herself — and it helps to share things with her, such as all the spiteful comments the other girls make about her, jeering at her clothes, her hair, her mannerisms, and in particular her silence, which seems to goad them more than anything.

I keep hoping that if I don’t react they’ll eventually grow tired of the game. They haven’t yet. But I can bear it …

She tells Mary about other tiresome things, sure that Mary would have found them tiresome too.

Like the rules
…

You were right to warn me about them, but it’s no good. I simply can’t remember them all: “walk, don’t run”; “use this staircase, not that”; “set out your work this way.” How on earth did you manage not to break them? I keep failing and so of course I am given black marks, and what with my bad spelling, I’ve had to wear “the black sash” no end of times. It’s all so petty and ridiculous, isn’t it?

And the deadly walking ritual …

No one will walk with me, so the teachers are forced to partner me. I think it must be as trying for them as it is for me — the conversation limps along like a man with one leg and inevitably collapses.

How different it would be if Mary were here — the talks they would have. But then everything would be different if Mary were here. Emily would have an ally who would surely agree with her about the appalling narrow-mindedness of the school’s ethos.

It seems to me that the basis of the regime here is hypocrisy: Girls are being trained to pretend to be what they’re not.

Witness this sample conversation between Miss Wooler and Miss Lydia Marriot, whom Miss W. has just reprimanded for being too bold:

Miss W: “Timidity and reticence are becoming in a woman. It is what men like to see.”

Miss L: “But what if you’re not timid?”

Miss W: “Then you must feign it.”

Can you believe it? Well, I’m sure you can because you experienced all this yourself. And the result is to turn out a set of simpering, affected ninnies, without a shred of originality or an intelligent idea among them.

As for any education we are supposed to be getting … where is it? Certainly it’s not to be gained from all this learning by rote. Didn’t you hate it too? So dull and pointless. At least on account of Charlotte’s teaching at home, I can keep in the middle of the class without too much trouble and not draw unwelcome attention to myself. I really can’t see the point of trying to win medals, as Charlotte did. Why work yourself to death just to sit at the top of the table?

She can’t resist telling Mary about the experience of having Charlotte teach her.

Charlotte has made it clear from the start that here I am a pupil and not her sister, and she goes out of her way not to show me any favoritism. She’s always finding fault with me and picking me up for small mistakes. But it’s a waste of time because, whatever she does, the others, quite unjustifiably, make nasty comments about Charlotte’s partiality.

But Emily’s not very comfortable with this. It seems disloyal to criticize her sister, especially as Mary is Charlotte’s friend too. What happened to her resolve to be kinder to Charlotte? She shouldn’t have mentioned it.

Even though she’s only writing the letter in her head and she’s never going to send it.

What she can’t tell Mary, even in a pretend letter, is what she finds unbearable.

She hates having every minute of her day organized for her and never having a moment to herself. Even going out doesn’t provide any relief — the deadly walks where they’re organized into an orderly crocodile and move at a funeral pace to supposedly picturesque spots.

These places are too soft and cushioning. She feels suffocated.

What she wants is the exhilaration of tramping over the moors, feeling the wind blow through her. She longs to be able once more to lose herself out there in those wild spaces under that wide sky.

She can’t even release the pressure of her feelings by playing the piano because it’s in the corner of the schoolroom and whenever she’s at leisure the other girls are there too. It’s intolerable to have to spend every minute of her day in their company. It’s not just that they’re uncongenial and don’t care about anything that matters to her.

The point is she is never, ever alone.

Even when she tries to hide herself in the garden while the others are playing ball games, as soon as she settles down in some secret nook in the shrubbery, the little Cook sisters track her down and start chanting doggerel from a safe distance.

Emil-ee Bront-ee

Tall as a pine tree

Emil-ee Thunder

Made a big blunder

She longs for solitude, to be able to escape into her imagination, into the world of Gondal. She’s brought an unfinished story with her and hidden it in the drawer under her clothes. Sometimes she takes it out at night and just holds it, like a talisman, a promise that one day she’ll be able to go on with it again. Knowing that she can’t at the moment makes it almost too painful, but she can’t help herself.

One afternoon, Emily’s late going up to wash for tea — Miss Catherine kept her back to reprimand her, not for the first time, for leaving her boots where someone might trip over them instead of stowing them neatly under the bench in the cloakroom.

As she approaches the door of the bedroom, which is ajar, Lydia’s voice rings out. “Alfonso Angora! He sounds like a rabbit.”

They have found her Gondal story! Paralyzed, her heart pounding in her chest, she’s forced to listen.

“Go on, Lyddy. Read us some more.”

“I couldn’t. It’s such childish claptrap.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.” Julia Caris’s voice. “It is rather melodramatic, I grant you, but I think she has something.”

“I’ll say she has! A bad case of brain fever is my diagnosis. I mean, why write in such tiny print that you can hardly read? And listen to this. ‘At the approach of the ghastly specter, Alfonso —’ ”

Galvanized at last, Emily bursts into the room and snatches the paper from Lydia’s hand. “How dare you! How dare you go into my drawer and take this. It’s private.”

Lydia doesn’t turn a hair. “If it’s so private, you shouldn’t wave it around at night when people can see you. We thought it was a love letter, didn’t we, Harriet? But alas, nothing so interesting.”

Speechless with fury, Emily can only glare at them.

Julia has the grace to look embarrassed, but the others are obviously amused.