“You’re quiet today,” Elias observed during the meal. “You’re usually quiet,” he corrected himself, “but today, you’re different.”
He reached over the table and stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. She looked into his darkly tender eyes and anxiety gushed through her, sudden and deadly like a flash flood. Did he want children, and if yes, would one be enough for him? What did he think of women who didn’t wish to be swallowed whole by motherhood? He was her opposite when it came to social aptitude; he lit up a room when he entered, he exuded a natural personability that compelled people to seek him out and enjoy his company. Considering his own large family, he wouldn’t just expect children, he would love on them expressively. She pictured a small child on his arm, its curly head leaned against his shoulder, a chubby starfish hand on his chest. Something inside her folded into itself until it was so dense and heavy, she felt it press into her organs. She came to her feet, and only noticed she had done so when Elias rose, too, a look of surprise in his eyes.
“I’d like to take a turn around the park,” she said in a brittle voice. “The park across the street.”
“Yalla,” he said, at once ready. “Let’s go.”
“Please,” she said, holding up her hand. “I need a moment alone.”
She fled.
Chapter 30
Cadogan Park was moderately sized, a rectangle of well-pruned green intended for sitting rather than extensive strolling, and so she kept walking the outer path round and round. Twice she overtook the same young mother who looked perfectly happy pushing a pram along. I’m the freak, Catriona thought, I always have been. It began with her thoughts on pregnancy, how the very same process in any other context would be the stuff of gothic novels: a woman of sound mind had to watch her belly swell to grotesque proportions, knowing that if all went well, it would merely end in pain. Meanwhile, everyone told the beleaguered woman to be overjoyed. There was a wrongness to this, and a passivity which confirmed for all the world to see that at their most uniquely female activity, women truly were just vessels, to be filled and stretched out by the needs of others. She had enough presence of mind to never share her uncharitable thoughts out loud—not since the chimpanzee incident at the school in Bern.
Bern. The place her father had said would make her a woman. It had certainly taught her what it meant to be a woman. At first, it had taught her to do activities she wouldn’t have done at home. She had tried to find the good in that. She had soon enjoyed needlework, for example; the precision it required, the meditative effect of the needle darting in and out of the fabric in a lulling rhythm. But a schedule was in place, and before she could lose herself in a task, a bell would ring, or someone walked in and asked her to start on something else. After a few months, she felt irritable, spread thin, and oddly impaired in her thinking. They didn’t let her sink into a book. She couldn’t embroider until she felt done. She fell behind on her Arabic and Greek vocabulary. At first, she thought it was lingering heartache over Charles, but the schedule was a culprit, too. It sliced through everything. She complained to Alexandra about it, one of the rare occasions where she emoted rather heatedly.
“Puh, how grim you look,” Alexandra said. “Be careful that these wrinkles don’t stick.”
“Can’t you see what is happening?” Catriona shot back. “They are making brilliance impossible for us with these constant interruptions.”
Alexandra released a benevolent sigh. “The mistress of a house doesn’t have to be brilliant, darling; she has to be functional in the face of constant interruptions.”
The other girls in the Common Room were blatantly eavesdropping, and head girl Georgina Rowbotham looked repulsed, so Catriona left. Since her agitation didn’t subside, she went to Mrs. Keller’s office and shared her worries about the direful consequences of fragmenting a woman’s time. Mrs. Keller, young, pretty, and well-liked, nodded along as though she were listening.
The next day, the lovely headmistress betrayed Catriona in front of the entire class.
“A pupil came to my office yesterday,” she announced. “I should like to address her grievances in front of all of you, as other girls might have similar feelings. Now, this pupil asked an interesting question: How can we expect ‘greatness’ from women, when from the very beginning, we organize a woman’s time away into ‘parcels of meaningless activity’？”
Catriona’s face burned as though it had been whacked with a torch. Everyone who had heard her in the Common Room had turned their heads toward her; everyone was staring.