Catherine Fisher: Darkwater

Sarah didn’t have time to watch. The room was bitterly cold; she took the bucket out and filled it with coal, picking the largest pieces out of the filthy heap next to the privies. Soon her hands were black; she pushed her hair back and felt the smudge of soot down her face. Back inside, she stoked the small stove and lit it; it was carefully placed to face the pulpit, so no one else got much benefit. Every tiny scrabble of noise she made seemed huge; the room was a deep well of silence. Next she swept, the coarse scraping of the bristles raising a cloud of dust that hung in the air, so that a boy coughed and Mrs. Hubbard’s glare nailed him like an owl on a mouse.

“Do that again, luvvie, and I’ll mark your card. You’re a dolt. What are you?”

“A dolt,” the boy breathed in terror.

Mrs. Hubbard smiled. She raised her desk lid, poured a tot of gin into a tiny glass, and drank it. Her fingers mopped daintily at her lips.

It was a terrible morning. The tension in the room grew as the clock ticked on, ominous as the gray thunderclouds that gathered outside. Gulls cried over the roof; Mrs. Hubbard glowered up as if she wanted to dismiss them on the spot. She was tetchy and irritable and more and more coldly humorous as twelve o’clock came nearer. Her fingers tapped a drum roll of impatience on the desk, so that a few of the younger ones glanced up and were caught, staring hypnotized with dread. And always she was listening, her small eyes darting to the door.

Sarah was working grimly. Every corner of the paintwork had to be wiped, colonies of spiders and woodlice eliminated without fuss. She had to arrange the books, dust the pictures of Queen Victoria, Albert, and Gladstone, straighten the world map, give out supplies of beautifully new pens and pencils that would only be used for the duration of the governors’ visit. Mrs. Hubbard kept these in a box and used the same ones every year. Finally, the privies had to be cleaned; a stinking job Sarah loathed, but at least she was out of the stifling schoolroom.

Emptying the bucket, she paused a moment, leaning against the stone wall, letting the wind touch her face, salty from the sea. She despised and hated the school. At least, the way it was now. It might have been a happy place, with real learning; if she stayed on long enough she might become the teacher herself. But the thought of years of this turned her cold. It was only the books that kept her here.

There was a small shelf of them over the old mantelpiece. Mrs. Hubbard never looked at them, but on Friday nights after everyone had gone and she had scrubbed the floor, Sarah read them. Mr. Dickens’s novels, and Jane Austen’s, and a book about old Greek gods and a great battle at Troy that lasted ten years. And there were two histories too, all about the Normans and Stuarts and Tudors, that really told you about them, not like Mrs. Hubbard, who insisted on nothing but dates and names. There was an atlas with maps of utterly strange places; the Hindu Kush, Rhodesia, Paris. And above all, there was half an encyclopedia, A to M, with satisfying articles on how steam is made from coal, and how animals see in the dark. She had read them all, and was beginning again this week. That was knowledge, she thought. Real learning. She wanted more of it. If she had money she’d buy books of her own, but that was a hopeless dream. Like the library at Darkwater Hall.

A gull screamed a warning. She scowled, and went back in.

The class were chanting tables in a breathless gabble.

Mrs. Hubbard snapped, “Enough.”

Her black eyes watched them as Sarah gathered up the slates hastily. The classroom was a semicircle of fear, the tiny girl at the front rocking with anxiety. “Stop that!” Mrs. Hubbard barked.

The girl froze.

“Any mistakes?”

Sarah scanned the slates quickly. She hated this. If she said yes, someone would suffer. If she said no, she’d suffer. “No,” she said, glancing up.

“Liar,” Mrs. Hubbard said. “What are you?”

“A liar, Mrs. Hubbard.”

“Put them there. I’ll look at them myself, later.” The class relaxed a fraction. They knew she wouldn’t bother. “Second row. Monarchs of England. Begin.”

She never used their names. It was as if that would make them people, and she didn’t want people. Just dolts, and liars, and sniveling scared faces. Sarah backed off to the corner cupboard and stacked the slates inside. The boy—Archie, it was—was chanting in a monotone, careful not to sound too clever, or too slow. Mrs. Hubbard listened, half to him and half for the door, turning her snuffbox over and over.

“Enough.” She looked bored.

Archie sat down instantly.

“Next.”

Sarah saw who was next reflected in the glass, and winced. It would have to be Emmeline.

Emmeline Rowney was thin. She had something wrong with one of her eyes; it never looked at you straight. She was scrawny and came from a family who could hardly pay the fee; her mother slaved as a washerwoman to get enough. Maybe that was why Mrs. Hubbard enjoyed Emmeline so much.

The girl stood up, licked her lips, and said carefully, “Edward the Third, Richard the Second, Henry the . . . Fifth, Henry . . .”

Mrs. Hubbard jerked upright. She seemed overjoyed.

“What? What did you say?”

Emmeline froze.

“Repeat it! After the infamous weakling Richard, who?”

“Henry,” Emmeline whispered.

“His number!”

“F . . . Fifth.”

The whole class was already rigid, and seemed to stiffen even more, as if not showing any emotion was their only safety. Except for their eyes, which all moved in fascinated horror, toward the dim object that hung behind the door.

Sarah sighed.

“Come down here!” Mrs. Hubbard said.

Emmeline looked as if she would faint. “Henry the Fourth,” she gasped. “It was him I meant.”

“Indeed? I’m so glad to hear that, dearie. Don’t keep me waiting.”

The girl came down. She was white, her hands clenched in front of her, her frizzy hair coming undone from the plait at the back. Her nose ran; she wiped it on her sleeve.

Mrs. Hubbard turned majestically to Sarah. “Fetch it,” she commanded.

Sarah frowned. She went slowly behind the desk to the dim corner. All eyes followed her.

The cane leaned in its darkness. This was its place; a thin sliver of power, barely seen, but it dominated the whole room, all their lives, their sleep. Not always the same one, of course; Mrs. Hubbard wore out two or three a year. Now Sarah picked it up, seeing the ends of the bamboo were already split. It felt light and cruel, a swishing thing, ridged, the leather around the handle soiled with sweat, a hard grip. Every time she touched it she felt its attraction; she almost wanted to use it, to see how it would feel to wield that power.

Mrs. Hubbard squeezed out of the pulpit, uncreasing and uncrackling like a great dark puffball of sweat and pomander oils, the black bun of her hair glossy and tight, stabbed with hairpins.

Emmeline sobbed. Something broke in her; all the pent-up agony came tumbling out. “Please ma’am I’m sorry I’ll learn it honest I will but don’t give me the switch because me da he gives me enough and he’ll go mad he will . . .”

Mrs. Hubbard smiled with pleasure. “An enlightened parent. I’m sure you will learn it; I fully intend to present you, dearie, with a few reminders of your current failure. However, as it’s such an important day, and I don’t wish to get too . . . flustered, I will not use the cane.” The class’s silence was a blank astonishment.

Emmeline sniveled. “You won’t?” She sniffed, incredulous.

Mrs. Hubbard took a large pinch of snuff. “No, I won’t.” She inhaled the brown powder into her huge left nostril, then her right, and smiled.