6

One evening in late August of Jonathan’s second summer at the homestead, a schoolteacher walked up to the door of the sod hut. Her name was Miss Emelina McClanahan and she came from Cincinnati, Ohio; she wore a wide-brimmed hat with a ribbon on it and leather shoes that buttoned up. She announced herself and waited for Wify or Alvah to ask her in.

Nobody said anything. The children stared.

‘I’m opening a school for boys and girls around Sweetbrier,’ Miss Emelina started off in a rush. ‘I’d like to talk to you about that.’

Nobody said a word.

Miss Emelina’s fingers fluttered nervously over the row of buttons that secured her bodice. She was very young, as pink-cheeked as a porcelain milkmaid, tiny rosebud of a mouth, wee little teeth inside, big eyes as unreflective as a teddy bear’s, but – plainly, plainly, Jonathan could see it, hear it, almost taste it – a spirit as pure as any Stoke spirit was besmirched. It was an impressive mound of bodice, too: whatever would Alvah have made of it? And of her petticoats? Jonathan couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Education is vital to your children’s advancement—’ she began.

‘I got to work ’em,’ Alvah said, eyes glued (I’m sure of it) to that bodice.

‘Oh, I quite understand,’ she said. ‘As soon as planting begins, school ends—’

‘You ain’t charging nothing, are you?’

‘Well, yes, I—’

‘We ain’t paying,’ Wify interrupted.

Alvah swung around. ‘Shut up,’ he said.

But Wify had no sense. ‘We ain’t even got a calf, Alvah,’ she whined.

‘Shut up!’ he said again. He often resented Wify. He wanted vengeance against her for all kinds of things, most of them wholly out of her control. So to spite her, he turned to Miss Emelina, to her impressive bodice and her clean petticoats and said (while Wify began to sob, huge shoulders ashudder like a washing machine with an unbalanced load), ‘How much?’

‘Well, for four children—’

‘Three. A boughten boy don’t need learning.’

Just as we reached this point in Jonathan’s life – it was about half past nine in the morning – Atlas’s one patient of the day showed up at the door. He’d put off all the others in my honor, but he hadn’t been able to reach this one. He wheeled me into the living room to meet her.

‘This is Malory Carrick, my niece,’ he said. ‘She’s come all the way from England to see me. Malory, this is Mrs—’ he began, scrambling around in his head for her name. ‘Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,’ he said then, ‘but I’ve forgotten – just read the damn thing, too. Begins with a “B”, doesn’t it? Mrs Blake? Am I right?’

‘Miss Pemberton, Dr Carrick,’ she said. She was frail and very thin; she wore a man’s watch that slid down over the bones of her wrist as she shook my hand.

‘I’m an old fool,’ he said to her. ‘I do apologize. We’ve known each other for years, haven’t we?’ Then he said to me, ‘Let me introduce Miss Peeberton.’