Chapter Four
Lessons
The next morning I slept in.
When I walked out of my bedroom to
introduce myself to my English student, Sophie was sitting at the top of the
stairs. She wore her pyjamas and those spongy, brightly coloured curlers, in
her hair. She had a smile on her adorable face that lit up the overcast morning
and spoke in a sweet voice, ‘Bonjour! Je
m’appelle Sophie. Comment allez – vous?’
‘Je vais bien, merci. You must be Sophie,’ I
said and smiled, ‘I am Anne Eyre.’
She
dragged me into my room as I explained to her in French that we should try to
speak mostly English together from now on. Sophie asked me if I had a present
and I gave her a colouring set I’d bought for her at the station. She seemed
pleased with this.
‘Merci. Thank you,’ she said hesitantly.
I explained to Sophie that if we worked
well together this week, we would go into the village for a cream tea and movie
on Saturday afternoon. This seemed to excite her. The girl of six was now seated
at the end of my bed. She pulled out an apple from her pocket and began to eat
it.
‘This is my breakfast,’ the child said in a
French accent. ‘Leah also made me cereal.’ Leah helped in the kitchen and
organised the catering. I was told she lived nearby but sometimes she stayed at
the estate when there was a large house party.
As we walked down the stairs together, there
seemed to me to be little to do except speak to Sophie in English and entertain
her. Slowly, we made plans for the day. Her schedule went something like this:
swimming, breakfast, morning English lesson, lunch, and a walk around the farm
or into town, riding lessons, painting, dinner. After dinner we read or watched
television and played music. Our days began to fall into different variations
of this routine from the first week I arrived.
By the second week, Sophie would bound into
my room before breakfast and request that I take her swimming.
‘Bonjour, maintenant!’ she would whisper loudly in my ear.
‘Not now, Sophie, soon. And remember we are
speaking in English. ’
It was a challenge for her but she became
fluent very quickly.
If Sophie, who was an early riser, woke me
too early, I pulled the pillow over my face in protest.
‘Wake up!’ Sophie giggled as she took my
hand and pulled me out of bed the next morning.
Our days quickly fell into a routine.
In the morning if I woke first, I got Sophie
and helped her choose an outfit for the day. We’d go to the kitchen where Leah
or Merida, the other kitchen hand, would have eggs cooking and various grooms
and workmen were gathered around the kitchen table eating hungrily.
Some mornings Sophie and I had porridge
with brown sugar, honey and bananas. On other occasions we had toast and
poached eggs or fruit.
Sometimes, I’d read the paper that was
delivered from the village - or just the headlines - because Sophie would distract
me or be keen to go outside. She often played with her dolls after breakfast
while I read. I was trying to finish my reading list for the start of the
university year. I intended to study literature but I was still waiting to hear
the final result of my scholarship interviews.
We always started our school work by nine
in the morning. In the play room upstairs, an ancient desk had been cleared and
set aside for homework. It was the same room used by generations of Rochesters for
a similar purpose. No one ever told me who Sophie’s parents were and I assumed
it was impolite to ask unless someone offered an explanation.
Sophie herself just made a hand signal
like an aeroplane and slipped back into French, announcing, ‘Je viens de
France. La France est un pays merveilieux,’ asking me, ‘Vous etes-vous plu
ici?’ in her most polite voice.
‘Of course I like it here!’ I replied. ‘This
is an amazing house.’
Then she explained her origins to me, as
if her family lived overseas and she’d travel there by aeroplane one day! I
have to admit, this was a bit strange but when life offers you the beauty and
wonder of a second chance amidst the chaos of normal, everyday existence, you
don’t ask questions.
I was told Sophie’s last name was Varens; her
mother lived in Paris and she was being raised at her mother’s request here at Thornton
Hall. I assumed her mother had some link to this place. Mrs Fairfax used an old fashioned term, stating
that Sophie would have been a “ward of the state,” had Mr Rochester not taken
her in. This, I could relate to. Her relatives had been French; beyond that,
her origins were unknown to me. By my second week at Thornton Hall the mystery
was no clearer.
Sophie liked simple pleasures: drawing,
music and sports were her joys. Schoolwork was not - that became clear. Because
it was summer, I tried to incorporate her hobbies into her learning. We walked
to the stables and named all of the objects we saw in both French and English.
Sophie was a fast learner where the language of her adopted country was concerned
and already had a good, basic vocabulary.
Daily, her English improved and after a fortnight
we were speaking together more often in English than in French. It was exciting
to see my young charge, so delicate and frivolous naturally, running wild
across the land with me, exploring, and sketching and teaching me things too.
From the start, I now realize, Sophie was teaching me trust and the nature of
acceptance; perhaps even how to expect happiness. She had a wicked sense of
humour. She constantly played jokes on Mrs Fairfax and me and hid clever notes
and funny pictures in unexpected places, using both the French words and the
English translation. In this way, we learned together.
On one occasion during the first weeks I
was at Thornton, Mrs Fairfax was dismayed when Sophie performed some songs and outrageous
dance moves that were clearly learnt from video clips.
I quickly encouraged Sophie to move on to
the poem we’d been learning but not until I saw Mrs Fairfax frowning. ‘Sophie should
concentrate on her drawings and her riding and run the songs by me should she
wish to give an impromptu performance in future,’ Mrs Fairfax commented, a look
of surprise on her face.
‘I rarely encourage Sophie to watch television,
but sometimes I worry about Rochester’s friends - they can be such a wayward
influence. They leave the music channel on
all day and night when they are here. Is it any wonder the child has learnt all
of those dance moves. Still, I suppose it’s in her nature when you consider how
she was raised before she came here,’ Mrs Fairfax added.
I wasn’t sure what she meant and I didn’t
press for details. I would hate to be judged on my background and tried not to
do the same to others. Besides, Sophie had an ability to make me laugh and she
was just having fun trying to emulate teenagers who danced like that. I thought
it would be good for her to mix with children her own age, though, so we
enrolled her in the village ballet class after her impromptu performance.
I grew to like Sophie a great deal over
those first weeks and it was to my huge advantage that she seemed to like me. In
the afternoons, we went outside and sketched and painted in the meadow if it
was warm enough. We swam in the vast, warm indoor pool that was built on the
lower level of the estate; the water was heated even though it was summer. The
air outside was sometimes cool again by mid-afternoon, so we had to remember to
dry off completely before going outside.
Besides being one of the
most garrulous children I’d ever met, Sophie was also one of the nicest. She
and Mrs Fairfax restored my belief in human kindness as the endless, perfect
summer continued.
Sophie was happiest face painting and
dancing and playing with her many dolls and chatting endlessly using her newly
acquired English. I was happiest sketching and going for long walks into the
village and around the vast estate. I liked to walk over to the cliffs to write
and draw as I sat near the ocean.
What could have been a strange and
solitary life at the hall had become full and energetic by the time I was woken
early one morning by Mrs Fairfax knocking on my bedroom door.
‘Good morning, Anne. I thought I should
tell you, Nathanial Rochester is returning from America today.’
‘Oh,’ I said. The arrival of a complete
stranger - the owner of this vast estate - was sure to shake up our comfortable
routine.
‘I thought I’d tell you because he has
requested to meet you at dinner time.’
‘And Sophie?’
Mrs Fairfax laughed, ‘He’ll speak to her
when he arrives in the afternoon but I should warn you; basically, he is a good
natured person but he seems to have had more than an undue amount of stress in
his life and he has little interest in small children. Besides, he’s met Sophie
before. He can be terse at times but he has been a very solid guardian.’
‘Oh,’ was all I could think to say.
‘You should put on something a little less
drab, Anne. He and his friends are used to dressing for dinner and he’ll expect
you and Sophie to join him tonight. Do you have something a little more formal?
I thought it was all a bit impolite to be
told what “not to wear” but it was their house, their rules and I thought it
was in both my interests and Sophie’s to play along.
‘Um, not really, but I can get something in
the village this afternoon.’
‘Good. You need to be on your toes with Nathanial.
He can be quite rude, but he means well. ’
I smiled, hoping he wouldn’t be all bad.
Besides, my lack of care for what was fashionable might be mistaken for a lack
of care in relation to Sophie. I resolved to go into the village to buy
something new to wear for dinner tonight with the small amount of funds I had
left.
As I was about to leave the room Mrs
Fairfax reached into a jar in the kitchen cupboard and pulled out a generous
amount of money – more than enough for a new outfit.
‘Take this, Anne. It’s set aside for
household expenses and a nice dress definitely fits that bill.’
Since she would not take “no” for an
answer, I didn’t know what to say so I accepted the generous gift and thanked
her again.
I
looked into the mirror as I dressed to take Sophie into the village. I looked tired
and unrested.
I’d had a sleepless night with terrible
dreams for the first time in weeks. I imagined I’d heard scratching at the door
and furniture being moved across the floor boards above me. When I asked Mrs
Fairfax, she just shook her head and said, ‘Mrs Poole has been restless. She
writes novels and sometimes works into the small hours – or so I’m told. You have
to take the good with the bad in life, Anne.’
I was certainly used to doing that.
