The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace Page B

Querios said pleasantly, “I don’t know whether I shall ridicule it or not.”
    “We want to start a second school for g-g—young ladies, F-f-father. We have a room, in G-g—Golden Lane. We need benefactors.”
    Emmeline braced herself for the answer, resting her elbows in the soft furrows of the tablecloth. She sometimes had a feeling that the trust she placed in Querios, had always placed in him, to know better than she did, to have a surer sense of what to do, was not justified. The idea gave her the same swimming sensation as a dream she’d had recently—where they all lived in France, in a house of papier-mâché, built on ground of blancmange. She was often in France in her dreams.
    “It’s a marvelous thing, persuading others to be the instruments of your charity,” Querios said to Ben. “How you can call yourself a teacher looking like that, hair all over your face, I don’t know.”
    “If you still had hair, Father, how would you wear it?”
    Catherine’s voice was innocent.
    “Catty, darling,” Emmeline interrupted. “Pass me the marmalade, would you?”
    Querios didn’t seem to have noticed Catherine’s remark. He was in full flow, his fish forgotten.
    “At your age, Benedict, I was working with my father. You might have the luxury of indulging your conscience with the poor but I am obliged to labor alone to keep your brothers in school as I dimly remember I once kept you in school.”
    Emmeline listened with half an ear. She took a sip of China tea and felt the bite and smokiness assuage her sinking spirits. The truth was that Querios had feared Septimus Abse. Even in middle age he used tobecome nauseous before an audience with the old man. But when Septimus died, Querios was lost. Grief-stricken. The ringing in his ears had begun that hard, cold spring. Could it be five years ago already?
    If Benedict wanted to give his time to the ragged school movement, she had no objection. He would grow out of it soon enough. Querios had wanted to be a teacher himself when she first met him. He believed it was his vocation. Sometimes she thought that Querios felt reproached by Benedict, by his good heart and his desire to help people, and that his son reminded him of his own younger, better self.
    She returned her empty cup to its saucer with a sharpness that caused the teaspoon to jump.
    “You might consider my nerves,” she said. “It is distressing to see you quarreling over trivial matters.”
    “We’re not quarreling, Em.”
    “They’re not trivial, Ma.”
    Emmeline looked down the table at Querios again.
    “He’s not asking for very much, Q. Only a contribution.”
    “A contribution, eh? That’s all any of us want.”
    Emmeline felt a pulse in her temple begin to throb. He was getting more and more impossible lately, still refusing to talk to her about Catherine—sidestepping every conversation she tried to begin on the subject.
    Catherine picked fragments of shell from the sides of a boiled egg.
    “I’ll give you some books for the girls, Ben,” she said. “I think it’s an admirable idea to teach them to read and write.”
    “Not r-r—read, Cath. They are going to learn to cook and s-sew.”
    “Why not teach them to read? What are they meant to do in their leisure time?”
    “They don’t have any l-l-l … Anyway, Cath, I’ve got a new book for you.”
    “Oh, Ben, I love you. You are the best possible brother. What is it?”
    Catherine jumped off her seat and ran to him as Ben finished off his third plate of mushrooms and, dropping his fork on the cloth, extracted a book from his pocket. She threw her arms round his neck, kissed him, and dashed out of the room with the volume, her feet pounding on the stairs.
    Hannah stepped sideways through the door with an empty tray in her hands and began collecting plates. Querios rolled up his newspaper, stuck it into his pocket and pushed back his chair. Benedict folded another rasher of bacon into his mouth with his fingers and got