Confession by S. G. Klein

if they did recognize you, if they did acknowledge your dark side, if they could recognize your thoughts, sympathize with your dreams…. ?’
    ‘Yes,’ I shouted. ‘Yes! I don’t always want to be acting how others think I should act – I want to be myself – ’
    ‘God recognizes you – ’
    ‘Does he?’ I said but at that moment I did not much believe that he did and besides however much we might be recognized by the Almighty suddenly the only thing that mattered was being accepted for the creature I was here on Earth. So I had asked her again why most men seemed unwilling to see beyond outward appearances. ‘Why can’t they encourage us?’
    ‘Why should they?’
    Why indeed. Yet here was Monsieur Heger – better than most – highly educated, well travelled.
He
didn’t condemn Emily as a lesser man might for speaking her mind. He didn’t pronounce her hysterical or try to demean her. To him Emily and I were not strange creatures. If anything
he
was the strange one,
he
was the one willing to accept what others shunned.
    ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why did you do it when you know my feelings on the matter? I have been dreaming of returning to England ever since we arrived.
Dreaming
,’ she repeated. ‘Every night when I go to bed I pray that when I wake up I shall be on the boat back home, that all I shall hear will be the waves and the gulls – ’
    Calmly I tried to persuade my sister it had not been my suggestion. ‘Madame Heger,’ I said looking Emily straight in the eye, ‘has simply enquired if we would be interested.’
    ‘I do not believe you. You have already agreed. You forget I know what you are like.’ Our conversation, such as it was, had begun immediately after Madame had approached us with her offer of employment in return for our continued studies, bed and board. Emily had walked away without saying a word leaving me to catch up with her in the schoolroom where I could see her eyes welling with tears.
    ‘This is your doing,’ she said, her flat Yorkshire vowels growing stronger with every word she spat at me. ‘I know you are behind this. You.
You
– ’
    ‘I don’t deny that I wish to stay on, yes, but you are being fanciful Emily. This is Madame’s suggestion. It is her school – how on earth could I have engineered such a thing?’
    Emily turned her back on me.
    ‘Be reasonable,’ I said and then a little more softly. ‘We can go home if you want to. Nothing is set in stone – ’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do. That is precisely what I want.’
    ‘You are certain of that? This is such an opportunity – ’
    ‘You should not have said we could go home if you did not mean it – ’
    ‘But you have borne it here with such a valiant heart – surely another six months wouldn’t – ’
    ‘Madame asked me to teach music!’
    ‘You are good at music.’
    ‘I am good at many things but I do not want to teach them,’ she replied with a shudder.
    ‘But that is why we are here dearest. How can we go home and open up our own school if you balk at the merest suggestion of teaching! You have made rapid progress in French,
    German, Music and Drawing surely you want to….. ’
    ‘It will be different when I teach these things back there.
I
will be different.’
    I let out a long sigh. ‘Yes,’ I whispered.
    ‘You hate me.’
    ‘Your singularities try me– ’
    ‘I was certain you had put Madam up to it. You fit in so well here.’
    ‘I like it, yes.’
    ‘But
why
do you like it? I cannot bear being here yet you thrive in this place. What is the
    difference between us? Why are you so happy when I am so miserable?’
    ‘We are not the same person, Emily – ’
    ‘I cannot be the one responsible for saying no to her offer. For dashing your hopes – ’
    Here Emily paused and stared at me as if challenging me to say we could return home but I remained silent. ‘If we stay it would only be for another six months. After that we would go