Free My Candlelight Novel by Joanne Horniman Page B

Hetty for me…’
    She threw the basket a glance that spoke of a high disregard for babies. Despite her knowing that thing about crawling, I got the feeling she didn’t really like them.
    That was disappointing, because I’d begun to have a curious feeling of intimacy with her. Perhaps it was simply the effect of the night, and our proximity to each other in the dark. She was so close I could smell her. Some women smell overwhelmingly of floral perfume, but Maggie Tulliver has a sour, almost citrus-like odour that intrigued me.
    I brought back the tea and we sat there sipping it. Finally, Maggie Tulliver leaned over and tipped the last of hers into the mint, and it seemed to be a signal that she was leaving. Impulsively, I said, ‘How about I cook you dinner some time?’ (As I’ve said, we don’t, as a rule, serve dinner to our guests.)
    She said, ‘That’d be nice.’
    â€˜How about tomorrow night?’ I knew Lil planned to be out with friends, so we’d have the kitchen to ourselves.
    â€˜What time?’
    â€˜About seven?’
    That night I took Hetty into bed with me. She had a cot, but I often slept with her beside me. I listened to her murmurs that were so like the words she couldn’t yet say when she was awake. I wondered what colours her dreams contained, and whether she was remembering or imagining. I loved the solidity of her presence, and the intensity with which she slept. I loved it that when I woke in the morning she was often staring right into my face.

C HAPTER T EN
    T HE NEXT TIME I left Hetty at child care, I wondered where my normally sunny-natured child had gone. Surely the fairies must have been, and substituted a changeling with a foul temper in her place. I stood and watched helplessly as she went purple with fury, bubbles of spit and snot all over her face.
    Her screams rent the air so rudely that other mothers looked askance.
    â€˜Just go,’ said Jill. ‘She’ll be fine.’
    I went.
    The lecture hall was a refuge. The murmur of voices, the soft carpets, the discreet lighting, the cushioned seats and the air of calm expectancy made me relax. Already, I belonged there a little more than I had the last time. I dropped a pen, and the person in the seat near me retrieved it. He noticed my page of shorthand scrawl. ‘Nifty!’ he said with a smile.
    That day the lecture was on Jane Eyre .
    I learned that one female critic at the time said that if she had been Jane Eyre she’d have shot Rochester because of his deceit (whereas my impulse would have been to run off and live in sin with him since he wasn’t legally free to marry).
    The lecturer spoke of the sadomasochistic forces at work in Jane Eyre , the cruelty Jane was subjected to, how she was like a caged bird. I took notes dutifully, as most students do. She suggested that her spirit was corrupted by the cruelty. Abandonment, loss, defencelessness , were the words I scrawled in shorthand on my pad in the interests of scholarship, as though these were mere words and had nothing to do with me.
    She finished up with this quotation from the book, the part where Jane is locked in the fearsome red-room:
    â€˜Besides,’ said Miss Abbot, ‘God will punish her: He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don’t repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away.’
    â€˜I’ll leave you with that,’ said the lecturer, with a smile that came close to sadism. She closed her book.
    Something came over me. I was a child again, and had been left alone in an empty flat, thinking I must have done something wrong to deserve it.
    Getting to my feet, I pushed in front of people in my urgency to get away. I found myself crying (crying! I never