The Chatham School Affair

  As for Abigail Reed, she’d listened quietly, watching her husband as he watched Miss Channing, smiling politely from time to time, nodding occasionally, perhaps already beginning to sense that something unexpected had entered her life, a woman in a pretty dress, talking of the books she’d read, the things she’d seen, a world Mrs. Reed had never known, nor thought it important to know. Mr. Parsons’ voice echoed in the air around me. How well did you know Abigail Reed? Her face appeared before me, floating wide-eyed in the green depths. Not very well.

  The dinner had come to an end at around ten o’clock. By then Mary had drifted out of the front room and disappeared into the darkness surrounding the house. On the porch Miss Channing had politely thanked Mr. Reed and Abigail for the dinner, then turned and headed down the stairs and out toward the narrow path that followed along the water’s edge. From a distance she heard Mr. Reed calling for his daughter, then Mrs. Reed’s assurance that there was nothing for him to be worried about, that she was only playing near the shed.

  It had never occurred to me that it might still be there, but as I eased myself down the stairs of what was left of Mr. Reed’s house, I looked to the left and saw it. In contrast to the house, it was remarkably well-preserved, an unpainted wooden shed, tall and narrow, with a roof of corrugated tin. It stood in a grove of Norway spruce, perhaps a hundred yards on the other side of the Reed house. The trail that had once led to it was overgrown, and the tin roof was covered with pine needles, but the terrible weathering and neglect that had left the Reed house and Milford Cottage in such disrepair seemed hardly to have affected it.

  I approached it reluctantly, as anyone might who knew the terror that had shivered there, the sound of small fingers clawing at its door, the whimpering cries that had filtered through the thick wooden slats, Daddy, Daddy.

  It was windowless, its walls covered with tar paper, the heavy door trimmed in black rubber, creating a tight seal. Though very dark inside, it nonetheless gave off a sense of spaciousness because of the high roof, the great boards that ran its length nearly ten feet above, the large, rusty hooks that pierced the base of the boards and hung toward the floor like crooked red fingers. During Miss Channing’s trial, Mr. Parsons had repeatedly referred to it as a “slaughterhouse,” but it had never been any such thing. Rather, it was one of those outbuildings, common at the time, in which large slabs of meat were hung for smoking or salting or simply to be carved into pieces fit for cooking. The floor had been slightly raised, with half-inch spaces between the boards, so that blood could trickle through it, be soaked up by the ground beneath. Mr. Reed had rarely used it, although it rested on his land, but Mary had often been seen playing both inside it and nearby.

  It was this latter fact that had finally brought Captain Lawrence P. Hamilton of the Massachusetts State Police to its large gray door that afternoon. The captain had already searched Mr. Reed’s house by then, the little earthen basement beneath it, the cramped, unlighted attic overhead. That’s where he’d found a battered cardboard box, a knife, and length of rope inside, along with an old primer curiously inscribed. But Captain Hamilton had not been looking for such things when he’d first come to the Reed house that day. His concerns had been far more immediate than that. For although Mrs. Reed had already been found by then, Mary was still missing.

  CHAPTER 9

  It was nearly ten in the morning when I returned to my car, pulled myself behind the wheel, and headed back toward Chatham. By then, the atmosphere of the places I’d just revisited—Milford Cottage, Mr. Reed’s house, the little shed Captain Hamilton had warily approached on that sweltering May afternoon—had sunk into my memory like a dark, ineradicable stain. I thought of all that had followed the events of that terrible day, some immediately, some lingering through all the intervening years. I remembered my father at his desk, desperately trying to reclaim some part of a dream already lost, my mother staring at him bitterly, locked in her own sullen disillusionment. I saw a young world grow old, the boys of Chatham School expanding into adulthood, then shrinking into old age just as I had, though with less than they had to show for my time on earth, wifeless, childless, a man known primarily for a single boyhood act.

  Then, in the midst of all that dead or aged company, I glimpsed the youthful face of Sarah Doyle.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  I remember that it was a Saturday afternoon in early November, only a week following Miss Channing’s dinner with Mr. Reed and his family. I was sitting on a bench at the edge of the coastal bluff. On the beach below I could see several people strolling about or lounging under large striped umbrellas. There was no one in the water, of course, the season for swimming having passed by then. But far out to sea, I could make out the white sail of a fifteen-footer as it skirted along the shoreline. Watching it drift by, I yearned to be on it, to be cutting across an illimitable blue vastness.

  Sarah was wearing a long blue skirt and red blouse when she came up to me that morning, and she’d wrapped a flowered scarf over her shoulders, the knot tied loosely at her throat. Her hair was long and extraordinarily dark, and had a continually frazzled and unruly look to it, as if she’d just been taken by the heels, turned upside down, and shaken violently, her hair left in tangled disarray.

  Still, for all that, she was quite a lovely girl, the same age I was, and I often found my attention drawn to her as she swept past my room or bounded up the stairs, but most particularly when I found her lounging on the porch swing, her arms at her sides, her eyes half-closed and languid, as if lost in a dream of surrender.

  In those days, of course, the classes were more rigidly divided than they have since become, and so I knew that whatever my feelings for Sarah might be, they would always have to be carefully guarded. For unlike the other deadly sins, lust is sometimes joined to love, and such a prospect would no doubt have met with stern disapproval from my mother. And so, up until that day, I’d allowed myself only those hidden thoughts and secret glances that were within my sphere, thinking of Sarah at night, but by day returning her to the status of a servant girl.

  “And hello to you, sir,” she said as she approached me, the Irish lilt now striking me as somewhat thrilling and exotic.

  I nodded. “Hi, Sarah.”

  She smiled brightly, but seemed unsure of what to do next. “Well, should I sit with you, then?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said casually, as if the nearness of her body meant no more to me than that of the lamppost a block away.

  She sat down and looked out over the water. I did the same, careful to conceal the fact that all I could think of was her skin, the color of milk, her hair black as coal, the mysteries of her body infinitely enticing.

  As to her history, I knew only the broad details. But from the bits and pieces of conversation I’d overheard as I roamed the house on Myrtle Street, I’d learned of her mother’s early death in Limerick and had some picture of the bleak coastal village she’d grown up in after that. She’d had three brothers, two killed in the Great War, one an aimless drifter who’d disappeared into the dreary slums of East London. As to her father, he’d died of tuberculosis five years before, leaving her with only enough money to book passage to America. I’d heard my father speak grimly of that passage, the horrors of the steerage, the way the men had leered at her in the dank quarters of the ship’s belly, the stale bread and dried beef that alone had sustained her until she’d finally disembarked at the Port of Boston.

  After that Sarah had fallen upon the mercy of the Irish Immigrant Aid Society, who’d fed, clothed, and given her shelter until she’d landed a job as a serving girl in a great Boston house. It was there she’d met my father three years later, told him how much she longed for village life again, particularly if the village happened to be located near the sea. By all accounts she had spoken to my father with great earnestness, and my father, never one to remain deaf to such heartfelt solicitations, had first cleared it with her employer, then offered her a place in our house at Chatham, one she’d taken
without a moment’s further thought and performed dutifully ever since.

  But as I looked at her that morning nearly two years later, she seemed not altogether pleased with her earlier decision. There was a melancholy wistfulness in her eyes, a deep dissatisfaction.

  “Something’s bothering you,” I said bluntly, my own intense restlessness now spilling over into a general sense of radical impatience.

  Her eyes shot over to me, as if I’d accused her of stealing the silverware. “Now, why do you say that?” she asked in a sharp, defensive tone.

  I gave her a knowing look.

  She turned her head away, touched her cheek. “I’ve nothing to complain about. I’ll not be thought of as a whiner.”

  I was too consumed with my own complaint to feel much tenderness toward Sarah’s, so I said nothing more.

  This seemed to jar her. “Well I want you to know that I don’t at all regret coming to Chatham. Not at all, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t ever want your father to think I wasn’t grateful for what he’s done for me. It’s just that I didn’t come to America to be a serving girl. I’m after more than that. I want to better myself, to break away from the cleaning and cooking. To be something, don’t you know. Not just a serving girl … like I am now.” She shook her head violently. “It’s no good, feeling like I do. Like I’m all tied up in ropes.”

  I could see it in her face, a vast, billowing need to leap beyond the mundane and unglamorous life she otherwise seemed destined for, and which, since reading Mr. Channing’s book, I had also begun to feel far more powerfully than I ever had before. Watching her agitation, the restlessness that swept over her, I suddenly felt absolutely in league with her, the two of us castaways on a narrow strip of land whose strictures and limitations both appalled and threatened to destroy us. I saw my father as grimly standing in our way, reading his ancient books, mouthing their stony maxims. In my mind I heard his steady drone: Do this, do that. Be this, be that. I had never felt such a deep contempt for everything he stood for.

  “Maybe you should just take off, Sarah,” I told her. “Just take the train to Boston and disappear.”

  Even as I said it, I saw myself doing it. It would be a moment of wild flight, the real world dissolving behind me, all its gray walls crumbling, the sky a vast expanse before me, my life almost as limitless as the unbounded universe.

  “You should do whatever you have to, Sarah,” I continued boldly. Then, as if to demonstrate my zeal, I said, “If I can help you in any way, let me know.”

  Her response came as a question that utterly surprised me. For it had nothing to do with flight, with night trains to Boston, or disappearing into the multitude. Instead, she studied me intently, then said, “Do you remember Miss Channing? The lady that came to the house at the end of summer, the one that’s teaching art?”

  “I’m in her class.”

  “Such a fine lady, the way she talks and all. So smart, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  Sarah hesitated, now suddenly reluctant to ask what she had perhaps come to ask me all along. Then the wall fell, and she spoke. “Do you think that such a fine lady as Miss Channing is—talking so fine the way she does—that she might be of a mind to teach me how to read?”

  We headed down Myrtle Street together the following Sunday morning, Sarah walking beside me, a basket of freshly baked cookies hanging from one arm, her offering to Miss Channing.

  At the bluff we swung to the left, passed beneath the immense shadow of the lighthouse, then down the curving road that led into the village.

  “What if Miss Channing says no,” Sarah asked. “What if she won’t teach me?”

  “I don’t think she’ll say no, Sarah,” I said, though I know that part of me hoped that she would, wanted Sarah to be refused so that she would have to consider the other choice I’d already suggested, far bolder, as it seemed to me, edged in that frenzied sense of escape whose attractions had begun to overwhelm me.

  “But what if she doesn’t want to?”

  I answered with a determination that was new to me, an icy ruthlessness already in my voice. “Then we’ll find another way.”

  This appeared to satisfy her. She smiled brightly and took my arm with her free hand.

  Still, by the time we’d turned onto Plymouth Road, her fear had taken root again. She walked more slowly, her feet treading very softly over the bed of oyster shells, as if it were an expensive carpet and she did not want to mar it with her prints.

  “I hope I look all right, then,” she said as we neared Miss Channing’s cottage.

  She’d dressed as formally as she knew how, in what looked like her own schoolgirl version of the Chatham School uniform. Her skirt was long and dark, her blouse an immaculate white. She’d tied a black bow at her throat and pinned a small cameo to her chest, one that had belonged to her mother, her sole inheritance, she told me.

  It was not a look I admired, and even as I gazed at her, I imagined her quite differently, dressed like Ramona in The Gypsy Band, bare-shouldered, with large hoop earrings, a lethal glint in her eye, a knife clutched between her teeth as she danced around the raging campfire. It was as adolescent a fantasy as any I had ever had, and yet it was also tinged with a darkness that was very old, a sense of woman as most lusty and desirable when poised at the edge of murder.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  At Milford Cottage Sarah glanced down at her skirt and frowned. “There’s dust all over the hem.” She bent forward and brushed at the bottom of her skirt. “Sticks like glue,” she said, finally giving up. Then she lifted her head determinedly and I felt her hand tighten around my arm. “All right,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  We walked down the little walkway that led to the door of the cottage. Without a pause Sarah knocked gently, glanced at me with a bright, nervous smile, and waited.

  When no one answered, she looked at me quizzically.

  “Try again,” I said. “It’s early. She must be here.”

  Sarah did as I told her, but still there was no answer.

  I remembered the occasion several weeks before, when I’d come to the cottage at nearly the same time, found it empty, as it now appeared to be, Miss Channing strolling along the edge of the forest.

  “Sometimes she takes a walk in the morning,” I told Sarah confidently, although I could not be sure of any such thing. “Let’s look around.”

  We stepped away from the door, walked to the far side of the cottage, then around it to the rear yard, toward the pond. A heavy morning mist still hung over the water, its lingering cloud rolling out over the edges of the land, covering it in fog.

  For a moment Sarah and I stood, facing the pond, the impenetrable mist that drifted out from it covering the small area behind the cottage.

  Nothing moved, or seemed to move, neither the air, nor the mist that cloaked the water, nor anything around us, until suddenly I saw a figure drift slowly toward us, the thick gray fog thinning steadily as she came nearer so that she appeared to rise toward us smoothly, like a corpse floating up from a pool of clouded water.

  “Miss Channing,” Sarah said.

  Miss Channing smiled slightly. “I was out by the pond,” she said. “I thought I heard someone at the door.” Dimly I could see the easel she’d set up at the water’s edge, a large pad of drawing paper already in place upon it, all of it still shrouded in curling wisps of gray cloud.

  “This is Sarah Doyle,” I told her. “You may remember her from when you had dinner at our house the night you first came to Chatham.”

  Sarah lifted the basket toward her. “I brought you some cookies, Miss Channing,” she said nervously. “I baked them special for you. As payment, ma’am.”

  “Payment?” Miss Channing asked. “For what?”

  For an instant, Sarah hesitated, and I could see that she believed her entire future to be at stake at that moment in her life, all her limitless prospects to be placed in someone else’s hands.

  “For teaching me to read
,” she said boldly, eyes on Miss Channing’s face. “If you’d be willing to do it, ma’am.”

  Miss Channing did not pause a beat in her response. “Of course I will,” she said, and stepped forward to take the basket from Sarah’s trembling hand.

  An hour later they were still at it. From my place at the edge of the water I could see Miss Channing sitting at a small table she’d brought from the cottage and placed beneath the willow tree. Sarah sat opposite her, a writing pad before her, along with a sheet of paper upon which Miss Channing had written the alphabet in large block letters.

  I heard Miss Channing say, “All right. Begin.”

  Sarah kept her eyes fixed upon Miss Channing’s, careful not to let them stray toward the page as she began. “A, B, C…”

  She continued through the alphabet, stumbling here and there, pausing until Miss Channing finally provided the missing letter, then rushing on gleefully until she reached the end.

  “Good,” Miss Channing said quietly. “Now. Once more.”

  Again Sarah made her way through the alphabet, this time stopping only once, at U, then plunging ahead rapidly, completing it in a flourish of pride and breathlessness.

  When she’d gotten to the end of it, Miss Channing offered her an encouraging smile. “Very good,” she said. “You’re a very bright girl, Sarah.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah said, a broad smile lighting her face.

  They continued their work until almost noon, when I heard Miss Channing say, “Well, I think we had a very good lesson, Sarah.”

  Sarah rose, then did a small curtsy, a servant girl once again, taking leave of her superior. “Thank you, Miss Channing.” Her earlier nervousness had now completely returned. “Do you think we could have another lesson sometime, then?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Yes, of course we could,” Miss Channing told her. “Actually, we should have a lesson once a week. Would Sunday mornings be all right?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” Sarah burst out, a great relief and happiness sweeping over her. “You can depend on it, Miss Channing. I’ll be here every Sunday morning from this day on.”