Becoming Jane Eyre (7 page)

Charlotte wondered what other functions she served in this woman’s marriage? She was tempted to speak her mind as she sat by the wife. She watched her sew in the sitting room, where she knew Monsieur H. had sat, where she could still smell the lingering odor of his cigar, where she might even still hope to catch a glimpse of him. She was tempted to unburden herself to this woman who was surely his confidante. She wanted to shout at her:
I know you hate me, stop pretending! How can you be such a hypocrite? I know you are jealous of me, of your husband’s attention to me.You are jealous of my work, my writing, my gift, which he has recognized. I know you would like to keep me teaching forever, paying me a pittance for my hard work!
But she knew to keep quiet, as now she denies any trouble to her father when he asks her, “Charlotte, dear, is anything troubling you?”

“Just a headache, a little fatigue,” she says. She lies badly, as she did in Brussels, knowing she would suffer even more if she did speak, like a child drawn to a bakery window, standing outside and staring with longing at the sight of the plump, warm, and redolent bread.

With the school emptied for the summer, the H.’s gone to the seaside, the empty halls and dormitories rang with the hollow sound of her steps. She sat through those long, bright, silent hours and felt she could not have been more desolate if she had been abandoned in the wastes of the Sahara without water or food. Sometimes she felt she would not be able to bear the solitude. Her busy brain worked restlessly, and her thoughts returned ceaselessly to him.
Please, God, let him think of me. Let him come to me!
She had so few things to think about, and he had so many! While she thought of him at every moment, she imagined him surrounded by his family, his wife, his friends, his mind on other things.
Unfair! Unfair!

Every detail of the old school is imprinted indelibly on her mind as she sits quietly beside her father’s bedside writing in the half dark about Jane. Charlotte sees the Madonna in the alcove, the flowers at her feet, where she found herself whispering desperate prayers; the white bed hangings that swayed in the sultry summer air; the garden above all in the moonlight as the honeydew fell and the gloaming gathered, with its flowering parterres and fruit trees and the smell of his cigar that lingered and which she breathed in rapturously.

She was certain she smelled it one autumn morning when school had resumed. She lifted the lid of the desk, already scenting the precious odor. She imagined his hand lifting up the desk, rummaging freely yet gently, fingering her things. For there, among the books and pencils, her
cahiers
, she found the welcome traces of his presence, signs and stains he had left behind, the order of things altered, a nib dipped into ink, a pencil sharpened. There she found the book in German he had left her, signed for her on its flyleaf. He had thought of her. He had not forgotten her completely. He had dared to disobey his wife. How her heart lifted up with joy, the whole classroom, filled with the dull girls, suddenly bright and shining. She was obliged to step into the garden for a moment, to draw breath.

She kept hoping he would come to her. She lingered there in the early mornings, staring at the leaves, the shrubs, the birds, or late at night, gazing up at the stars, longing to see something more, the dark shadow of a human figure of a certain mold and height. She could not bring herself to leave, to move on. She was stalled.

All of this comes back to her in Manchester. This is the time in her life when she writes hour after hour, day after day. She realizes the working conditions are the most perfect she will ever find: silence in company, perpetual night. These rooms in this strange town allow her to write freely, but they will soon be lost to her. As soon as her father begins to recover, she will take him back to her sisters, her brother, Haworth. She must hurry.

CHAPTER EIGHT

W
hat the nurse worries about, as she sits by the old man’s side with her sewing, is the provisions. She is feeling peckish but smells no reassuring morning aromas: no rashers or sausage frying. She could do with something substantial for her breakfast. She imagines a nice kipper, a soft poached egg, black pudding, or even a bit of bread, fried in the drippings, but is afraid there will be only Scottish oatmeal again, and that not in great quantity.

She wonders if they have ordered sufficient amounts. She doubts the old servant provided by the doctor will serve up enough food. Last night’s dinner was a disaster: some sort of cod served almost cold in a watery, white sauce and sprinkled with a few capers. Do these people realize how much food will be necessary for their sojourn together over several weeks? she thinks, watching the daughter enter the room and take up her seat in the alcove with her notebook.

The daughter seems inexperienced, or certainly betrays a lamentable disinterest in the managing of household matters, things that any woman should surely be familiar with. When she attempted to give her certain excellent recipes, she had been ignored. Yet she is no slip of a girl. What is wrong with her? She spends her whole day with her nose in that notebook. There are three of them, after all—four, counting Biddy, the servant—and they have not ordered much meat or poultry. She does not relish the thought of eating potatoes and porridge for the next five weeks. She has a hearty appetite and as well as her kipper for breakfast or even a bit of steak and kidney pie, she likes a juicy mutton chop with a mushroom for her dinner and a pint of porter to accompany it. She considers a certain amount of meat and poultry necessary for the work she has to accomplish. In the daughter’s place she would have lain on a loin of lamb, cooked in advance, a couple of pig’s trotters, and a few mince pies in the larder.

She lifts a cup of tea to her patient’s dry lips, and he sips it. She says, “A little broth, perhaps?” and spoons some of the tasteless stuff between her poor patient’s lips. The nurse wishes she could leave this small, shabby house, these silent people, and go to her three little girls. She would like to hug them, swing them around in the air, hear them laugh. She thinks of her husband, a bricklayer, who was killed in a fall from a stepladder two years before. She remembers the sweet taste of his mouth.

Her patient nibbles at the piece of bread and butter she offers up to him, but after the first taste refuses the sliver of cold mutton. Almost gagging, he pushes away the offered food impatiently. She rebukes him for his recalcitrance.

“But you must keep up your strength, Reverend.”

She slips the pan beneath the blanket, where his skinny, old-man shanks lie. She waits by the door, turning her gaze away. No doubt he feels her presence, waiting, but now, apparently, the urge has disappeared. Nothing seems to be happening. She is used to this. She remains where she is while he strains to produce a small offering for her, to take advantage of this opportunity she has given him. She hears a slight rustle and drop. She goes over to the bed, catching a glimpse of his body as she lifts the blanket to reclaim the pan. He lies stiffly on the enamel, shivering, his worm of a member drooping between his legs. She wipes him clean and removes the pan.

Will she be exposed to such helpless humiliation in her old age? Will she, too, be deprived of the most elemental dignity, like this old man? It reminds her of her early dreams of nakedness, of being stripped of her clothes in a public place. The thought is horrifying now, but perhaps she will not mind by then. She remembers how she felt when her babies were born. She did not care who saw her naked or even what happened at that moment to the baby, the little tadpole swimming its way into life.

There are these narrow stairs she must negotiate. Up and down, up and down, several times a day, bedpan in hand, she risks breaking her neck. Her boots pummel the floor-boards. She presumes they will need her to stay for the five or six weeks the old man will have to lie here, flat on his back. Or so Dr. Wilson has told her.

The nurse is not sure how long she will want to stay on here, whether or not the food is sufficient. She walks across the small back garden, a few zinnias strangled in their dry beds, a dusty chestnut tree, thin cypresses against a wall. She looks up into the leaves. The edges are brown. She feels a shift in the weather, the sun obscured by cloud. Trapped heat rises from the earth. The privy is at some distance from the main building, at the back of the narrow house. The nurse empties the pan and then relieves herself while she is at it, sitting for a moment despite the strong smell and contemplating her solid black boots, listening to the buzzing of a trapped fly, a moment of repose.

Back in the garden, a light breeze blows the ribbons from her cap about her plump arms, and the thin cypresses sway. She enters the dark, redbrick building and glances into the dingy, ground-floor kitchen. She nods good-day to Biddy, who seems rather deaf and uncommunicative and is peeling potatoes over the sink. Her work is not difficult, she will admit, as Dr. Wilson has promised, and the parson is a quiet, uncomplaining patient, but there is always the danger of infection in such cases. She is a great believer in the efficacy of leeches. She must suggest this to the doctor when he calls later today.

What the doctor has not foreseen is that living in close proximity, day after day, with these two does not appeal to her. She climbs the stairs and reenters the darkened room. For a moment it looks as if her patient has disappeared. Then she sees him, lying patiently on his back in the shadows, his daughter dutifully at his side in her bilious, dark-green dress.

The scant provisions are not the only signs of hardship. The daughter’s dress—with the old-fashioned
gigot
sleeves, the gray fichu, the petticoats without a flounce or a wave, the way the dress hangs on her body, though neat enough—looks out of date and dowdy, after all, to one who has worked for some of the better families in Manchester. These two may not realize it, but she has been in some demand. She can pick and choose her cases. Nursing work may not be distinguished, but there is no shortage of it for the young, strong, competent, and, if she says so herself, attractive.

The silence in the room weighs on her, as she bustles around, straightening things up. The daughter goes on scribbling in her book without lifting her head.
What would a spinster like her have to say?
The old man lies so still, he might be dead. He takes his lot with grim resignation and has been told not to talk or move, of course. But the daughter puts on unnecessary airs, hardly saying a word or, when she does utter a few, muttering them almost incomprehensibly and in such a soft, doleful voice she can hardly be heard. The daughter appears almost as blind as the father, as she lifts the book up to her nose or bends down low to it.

She wonders if she should say something about the scant provisions. The daughter looks up, as if she senses this thought, and even in the dim light the nurse sees a momentary flash, a spark of smoldering fire in the large, luminous eyes behind the glasses, which surprises her.
Perhaps not as mild and meek as one might think at first glance.

The daughter turns from her immediately and plunges her nose back into her writing book.
Who do you think you are, dearie?
She is accustomed to a bit of a bustle, a friendly word now and then, an appraising glance, even from the most aristocratic of her patients.

When she worked for Lady Sedick last summer at Thornton, there were the housekeeper who chatted with her at length in her cozy sitting room in the evenings and the groom, who had his eye on her. She can still see him as he was early that spring morning when she took a turn in the dew-wet garden: a big, sandy-haired, strapping young fellow, standing astraddle in the sunlight in his mire-flecked boots, offering her a big bowl of wild strawberries he had picked from the garden, swimming in cream. Irresistible.

Even Lady Sedick, herself, whose husband was absent most of the time, liked to converse about her ailments at some length, particularly in the middle of the night when she could not sleep. She would call her at moments like that, plaintively, and ask her to bring her a
tisane
and perhaps a little biscuit. She would dip the biscuit into her cup and wet her lips, the dark hair on the upper lip damp. Sometimes she would even hold her hand or have her brush out her thin hair. “My dear, my dear, if you knew how I suffer,” she would say, and press her hand to her heart. Sometimes, when she had asked her to massage her shoulders and back, and if the nurse would allow the tips of her trembling fingers just to touch her décolleté with delicacy, she would make a little moaning sound and say, “What healing hands you have, my dear.”