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‘Very well, I’ll go in the morning.’
And Mrs Grouse smiled and I could feel her eyes on my back as I walked off to the kitchen to ask Meg what sweet pastries she might have for me to take to Theo.
6 (#ulink_3cb3bed3-459d-5a62-ba8e-386c8a2a6b50)
I don’t know when the nightwalks started, for I had had them as long as I remembered, and of course, of the walks themselves I recalled nothing, except the waking-up afterward in strange places, for example the conservatory, and once in Mary’s room up in the attic, and several times in the kitchen. I knew, though, how the walks always began; it was with a dream, and the dream was every time the same.
In it I was in bed, just as I actually was, except that it was always the old nursery bedroom which was now Giles’s alone but which I used to share with him, until Mrs Grouse said I was getting to be quite the young lady and ought not to be in a room with my brother any longer. I would wake and moonlight would be streaming through the window – oftentimes, though far from always, the walks happened around the time of the full moon – and I would look up and see a shape bending over Giles’s bed. At first that was all it was, a shape, but gradually I realised it was a person, a woman, dressed all in black, a black travelling dress with a matching cloak and a hood. As I watched she put her arms around Giles and – he was always quite small in the dream – lifted him from the bed. Then the hood of her cloak always fell back and I would catch a glimpse of her face. She gazed at my brother’s sleeping face – for he never ever woke – and said, always the same words, ‘Ah, my dear, I could eat you!’ and indeed, her eyes had a hungry glint. At this moment in the dream I wanted to cry out but I never could. Something restricted my throat; it was as though an icy hand had its grip around it and I could scarce get my breath. Then the woman would gather her cloak around Giles and, as she did so, turn abruptly and seem to see me for the first time. She would quickly pull her hood back over her head and steal swiftly and silently from the room, taking my infant brother with her.
I would make to follow but it was as though I were bound to the bed. My body was leaded and it was only with a superhuman effort that I was finally able to lift my arms and legs. I would sit up and try to scream, to wake the household, but nothing would come, save for the merest sparrow squawk that died as soon as it touched my lips. I would put my feet to the floor, steady myself and walk slowly – my limbs would still not function as I wished them to, in spite of the urgency of the situation – to the doorway. There I would look in either direction along the corridor but have no clue which way the woman had gone. It was no good trying to reason things, she was as likely to have gone left as right and I was wasting valuable time prevaricating. And so I would choose right, it was always right, and begin to walk, urging my weighted legs to move. And then…and then…I would wake up, sitting on the piano stool in the drawing room, perhaps, or in Meg’s chair in the kitchen, sometimes alone but like as not surrounded by the servants, who would be watching me, making sure I did not have some accident and harm myself, or somehow get outside and drown myself in the lake. When I woke, my first words were always the same: ‘Giles, Giles, I have to save Giles.’ And Mrs Grouse or John or Meg or Mary, whoever was there, would always say, ‘It’s all right, Miss Florence, it was only a dream. Master Giles is safe and sound asleep.’
Because I remembered virtually nothing of the walking part of the dream what I knew of my nightwalking came from the observations of other people. Often I liked to nightwalk in the long gallery, a windowed corridor on the second floor that stretched along the central part of the front of the house. John told me how, when he first came to work at Blithe, he had been to the tavern in the village one Saturday night and was returning home up the drive somewhat the worse for wear when he looked up at the house and saw a pale figure, all in white, moving slowly along the long corridor, now visible through one window, then disappearing to reappear a moment later in the next. At the time he knew nothing of my nocturnal habits. ‘I don’t mind telling you, miss,’ he told me many a time, ‘I ain’t no Catholic but I crossed myself there and then. Knowing as I do the reputation Blithe has for ghosts, how it has always attracted and pulled them in, I convinced myself it was some evil spectre I was seeing. I was sure I’d come in and find the whole household murdered in their beds.’
Mrs Grouse told me that I always walked slowly, not as sleepwalkers are usually depicted in books, with their arms outstretched in front of them as if they were blind and feared a collision, but with my arms hanging limply at my sides. My posture was always very erect and I seemed to glide, with none of the jerkiness of normal walking, but smoothly, as if, as she put it, ‘you were on wheels.’
It was true what John said about Blithe and ghosts. Mrs Grouse reckoned it all stuff and nonsense but Meg once told me the local people thought it a place ghouls loved, a favourite haunt, as it were, to which any restless spirit was attracted like iron filings to a magnet. And now, even though it was only I, Florence, sleepwalking, I seemed somehow to have added to this superstition.
Meg told me that when I woke from my walks it uselessed to speak to me for several minutes, that I seemed not to hear. Often, before I was myself, at the moment when I seemed to have emerged from the dream but had not yet returned to real life, I began to weep and was quite distraught, and if any should try to comfort me I pushed them away and said, ‘No, no, don’t worry yourself about me! It’s Giles who needs help. We must find him, we must!’ Or something like.
After I had nightwalked three or four times and it began to be a pattern, they called in Dr Bradley, the local doctor, who came and gave me a good going-over, shining lights in my eyes and poking about in my ears and listening to my heart and so on. He pronounced me fit and well and told them it was likely the manifestation of some anxiety disorder, which was only natural considering my orphan status and the upheavals of my early life. This was confirmed, he said, by my fears focusing upon Giles, who was, after all, the only consistent presence in my life. I read all this in a report I found on Mrs Grouse’s desk one day, when she had gone into town on some errand. I curioused over the words ‘upheavals of my early life’. I could not remember anything of my parents – my mother died in childbirth and my father some four years later with my stepmother, Giles’s mother, in a boating accident. I recalled nothing of any of them, and as the servants were only engaged after they were all dead, they could tell me nothing either. As far as my early life went, it was all a blank, a white field of snow, without even the mark of a rook.
7 (#ulink_47510528-821a-5810-aaef-f22f4f0a4322)
Before I set out to visit the Van Hoosiers next morning, John came back from town with a letter, a rare enough occurrence at Blithe, where Mrs Grouse received correspondence from my uncle maybe two or three times a year and little else. It was for me, and I reflected that from being completely unlettered but a few weeks ago I was now the most episto-latoried person for miles around. The letter was, of course, from Giles and I heart-in-mouthed as Mrs Grouse commenced to read it, after she had first sniffed and said, ‘Humpf, seems folks think I’ve nothing better to do all day than read letters to you.’
Dear Flo,
Thank you for your letter. I have read it ever so many times and it is tearing from so much folding and unfolding. I like the sound of your ice skating and cannot wait for the holidays. Do you think Theo Van Hoosier will be able to find any skates to fit me? Will the ice bear the weight of three of us? Or will we take turns? I am very slow at my lessons, but I don’t mind when the others laugh at me. It is better than being hit or pinched. But you are not to worry about it because it does not happen often. Not so very often, anyway. I hope you are well. I hope Mrs Grouse and John are well. I hope Meg and Mary are well.
Your loving brother
Giles
The letter from me Giles referred to was, of course, written by Mrs Grouse and so contained none of the things I would have liked to tell him, about the tower room, for instance (although I had not yet decided whether or no to let him in on that), and none of the anxious inquiries about himself I longed to make. His references to pinching and hitting shivered me quite, although it uncleared whether he had actually suffered physical abuse or if ‘you are not to worry about it because it does not happen often’ merely referred to the teasing, but I had no time to reflect upon it now. I was all done up ready to go visiting, so I took the letter from Mrs Grouse and slipped it into my overcoat pocket, where it heavied my spirit as if it had been a convict’s leg iron or a hunk of stolen bread down a schoolboy’s pants. I had wanted to walk to the Van Hoosier place but Mrs Grouse would have none of it. It was more than a mile and although the roads were clear of snow today, if it blizzarded again I might be stranded halfway, not to mention that even if that didn’t happen I would death-of-cold me. She neverminded that I had been out in the cold on the ice every afternoon anyway. So John was to horse-and-trap me there, which was fine by me, for once we out-of-sighted Blithe and Mrs Grouse’s prying eyes he handed me the reins and let me drive, as he often did when the housekeeper wasn’t around. The old horse we used on the trap, Bluebird, was so docile and knew all the local routes so well that in truth there was not much driving to be done, and even should it snow, it little dangered the horse leaving the road and wandering into a ditch.
I had never seen the Van Hoosier place; it was approached by a long driveway, and set in woodland so far back from the main road as to invisible all but its chimneys when we drove past. So I was surprised to find it smaller than Blithe, although in every other respect much grander. You could tell that from the moment you turned off the road and through the entrance gates, which were newly painted, in contrast to our own peeling and chipped portals. The edges of the drive were neatly manicured and the lawns either side trimmed to within an inch of their lives. The house itself sparkled and gleamed in the winter sun; it did not absorb the light like dull old Blithe. John dropped me at the front door. ‘I’ll drive the trap around the back and make myself comfortable in the servants’ kitchen, Miss Florence,’ he said as he handed me down. ‘Just have them send for me when you’re ready to leave.’
I anxioused as I reached for the bell pull. I was all best-frocked today and did not feel in my own skin. The door was opened (soundlessly, it did not creak like nearly all the doors at Blithe) by a uniformed footman. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, questioning an eyebrow.
‘I – I came to inquire after the health of Mr Van Hoosier,’ I mumbled. ‘That is, I mean, well, young Mr Van Hoosier.’
‘And you would be…?’
‘Florence, from Blithe House.’
He held open the door and bowed me in. I found myself in a grand hallway with a great sweeping staircase, chandeliered and crystalled to the nines, mirrors everywhere, so that I was surrounded by what seemed dozens of pale, gawky girls, staring at me from all directions. ‘If you’ll just wait one moment, miss, I’ll tell Mrs Van Hoosier you’re here.’
He went off, heels clicking the tiled floor. I gazed at myself in the mirrors some more then decided to concentrate on looking down at my boots, which I found far more comfortable. After what seemed an age – I figured he had a mighty long way to walk – the man clicked his way back and invited me to follow him. He led me down a long corridor, opened a door and insinuated me into a small sitting room, where Mrs Van Hoosier was seated at a walnut writing desk, evidently in the middle of penning a letter. She looked up and sugared me a smile. ‘Come in, my dear, come in and make yourself comfy. You must be frozen after your journey over here.’
She stood up, walked round the desk and shook my hand. I handed her the paper bag of pastries I had brought. ‘For Theo,’ I explained.
She opened the bag and peered at its contents and then, without comment, placed it on the desk and indicated a chair by the fire. ‘Melville, bring us some coffee and cake, would you?’ I heard the door close behind me. I sat down. I had met Mrs Van Hoosier but the once, the time they called at Blithe to introduce us to Theo. I had little attentioned her on that occasion, being much more taken with Theo and wondering how long it would be before he broke something. Observing her now, what struck me most was what a huge battleship of a woman she was. She was tall, and you could see that was where Theo got his height from, but she was also filled out, solid, not bendy like her boy. She was mantelpieced by a large bosom that cantilevered out in front of her; you could have stood things on it, a vase of flowers and a bust of Beethoven, and a family photograph or two, maybe. Her hair was all piled up on her head and that probably added another few inches. When I sat down she gianted over me, which didn’t help my nervousness.
She put one hand on the mantelpiece over the fire and leaned against it.
‘I – I came to inquire after Theo, I mean Mr Van Hoosier,’ I muttered. ‘I was hoping perhaps to visit with him and maybe cheer him up.’
She insincered me a smile. It felt like a grimace. ‘Ah yes, how kind of you, but I’m afraid that won’t be possible. He’s much too sick. The doctor has forbidden him any excitement.’
I smiled at the thought that I might constitute excitement.
‘You find that amusing?’
‘Oh, no, ma’am, not at all. It was just, well…’ My words died away.
The door opened and Melville reappeared with a tray. Mrs Van Hoosier sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace from me. Melville moved a side table next to her and set the tray on it. He placed another table beside me. ‘That’s all right, Melville, you can go.’
She poured the coffee and added milk and handed me a cup. ‘You have enjoyed Theo’s company, it seems.’
I nodded. ‘Oh, yes…’
‘Well, of course. He’s a fascinating boy.’
It wasn’t the word I’d have used for Theo.
‘And I thought it would be good for him to have some companionship here.’ I nervoused a sip of coffee. She raised her cup to her lips but then paused and lowered it slightly. ‘Though I wonder now, in the light of what’s happened, whether that wasn’t a mistake.’
‘A mistake?’
She proffered a plate of tiny tea cakes but I declined. She took one herself and popped it whole into her mouth and masticated slowly for a moment or two. The clock on the mantelpiece began to tick louder. She swallowed. ‘Yes, a mistake. All that skating and running around in the cold. I fear it has done his chest no favours.’
‘But, Mrs Van Hoosier, if I may make so bold –’
‘You may not.’ She inserted another cake into her mouth and chewed it so angrily I all but felt sorry for it. When it was finally dead she turned and fixed me a look, as though she were a scientist and I some kind of bug she was microscoping. ‘The problem is, Florence, that you have been left to run wild. I think your uncle should have kept a closer eye on you. There is more to being a guardian than providing a home and food.’
I eagered a question. ‘Do you know my uncle?’
‘No, I’m afraid I never had that pleasure, never even heard of the man until we bought this place, although I did meet your stepmother once.’
‘What was she like?’
She screwed up her eyes, as if shutting out the present and gazing at the long-distant past. Finally she opened them and picked up a bell from the table beside her. ‘Do you know, it was years ago, when she wasn’t much more than a girl. She was pretty, though not at all sophisticated, but other than that I don’t rightly remember her at all. Then I heard she’d married someone from these parts.’ She rang the bell.
‘That would be my father,’ I said.
‘So it would seem,’ she said.
‘And they died, in a boating accident, I believe.’
‘How tragic,’ said Mrs Van Hoosier as if it wasn’t at all. Melville appeared in the doorway. ‘Anyhow,’ she continued, ‘I think perhaps it would be a good idea if Theo were to visit you a little less. He has his lessons to learn and, what with his illness, his tutor fears he’s getting behind…’
‘Y-you’re stopping his visits?’ I shocked how this suddened to matter to me. I would not have thought to have cared.
‘No, my dear, I wouldn’t want to deprive my son of all amusement. I’m just reining back on them a little, is all. I think too much excitement is not good for him. Melville, ask for the young lady’s carriage to be brought round, would you?’
8 (#ulink_1d21e709-dfc2-5710-a86b-e7d19d2a2a2b)
That night was all toss-and-turn and longing for dawn; I was too mindfilled to sleep. From being a girl who had too much time on her hands, I now found myself fully occupied by all the things that were happening in my life. First there was poor Giles, and what I between-the-linesed from his letters. Other than that ambiguous phrase about the pinching and hitting, there was nothing I could actually put my finger on, no direct complaint, although I certained he would make one if he were really in trouble or upset. Then, at one of my many wakings, it came to me, wondering me why I hadn’t thought of it before. Of course, his letters would be censored; a teacher would read them before they were allowed to be sent home. Any bald statement of bullying would certainly be excised; the school would not want bad impressions being conveyed that might anxious parents; that would not do at all. As you may imagine, the thought did not comfort me one bit.
Next I was thinking about Theo Van Hoosier. Not just how I would miss his visits, odd fellow though he was, but also how Mrs Van Hoosier had in-betweened me with her ruling that he could still visit, but much less often. It would have been better if she had banned him altogether. As things stood, I would not be able to take to the library in the afternoons, but would still have to keep watch for Theo from the tower. Only now there would be a great deal more three-and-a-halfing, for there would be many more afternoons when Theo didn’t show at all, and the frustatory of it was that I would never know when he was coming and when not, so would have to do it for longer and, most of the time, for no reason at all. I cursed Theo that he had ever come into my life and inconvenienced me so, and at the same time I found myself missing him and wishing him here. It was the rook and the virgin snow all over again.
But by far the most wakery thing that night was not what Mrs Van Hoosier had said about her son, but the remarks she had carelessed about my uncle and my stepmother. Even when I was thinking about Theo, or worrying over Giles, whatever my thoughts, that undertowed them all.
Of course, I had not gotten myself so far through life without wondering about my parents. I had tried asking Mrs Grouse about them but she always stonewalled me. ‘I only know what I have been told. Your mother went out of the world as you came into it and your father died in a boating accident, along with Master Giles’s mother, when he was still a baby,’ was all she would say.
I attempted going at it another way, by questioning her about my lineage, putting it to her that since Giles and I bore the same surname as our uncle, then our father must have been his brother. ‘I have met your uncle only once, Miss Florence,’ she said, in the manner of someone ducking a question not because they subterfuged but rather to discount any possibility of making a mistake, ‘and that was in New York when he engaged me to come here and run the house and look after Master Giles and you. You were four years old then and that’s all I know. We didn’t discuss your family tree.’
Now I thought how I could maybe find out more if I wrote my uncle and simply asked him straight out to tell me who I was and all about my parents, but then of course it was not so simple. My uncle had given strict orders to illiterate me; he wouldn’t be best pleased to find my penmanship turning up in his morning mail.
It obvioused me it was no use putting the thing to Mrs Grouse again. She was a simple soul who transparented her feelings; she was like George Washington, she couldn’t tell a lie. If she’d been hiding anything, I would have guessed straightway. She told me nothing, not because she would not, but simply because she didn’t know. Asking her again about my mother and father would bring no information but simply alert her to my curiosity and any other action I might take.
Quite what that action would be conundrummed me quite. I spent a whole afternoon in the tower not reading but thinking about it, and dozing, of course, having sleeplessed the night. Every time I felt my head nodding and jerked back to waking, I had to make the mad dash down to the front door in case I’d missed Theo, even though in my heart of hearts I knew he wouldn’t be coming that day; I couldn’t take the risk. I wished he were there and, back in the tower after fruitlessing yet another front-dooring, I pretended he was and imagined us face-to-facing, me on the chaise, he on the captain’s chair, discussing my problem.
‘So that’s it,’ I told him, having nutshelled the whole thing for him. ‘What can I do?’
He stroked his chin and got up and paced about in a most businesslike way, purposefulling long strides, hands behind his back. Finally he stopped and looked down at me, cracking open a smile. ‘Documents,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
He came over to me and bent down on one knee, seizing my upper arms in his big bony hands. ‘Don’t you see, there must be documents relating to you. Everyone has documents. And likely they’re somewhere in Blithe House.’ He released me and stood looking at me, awaiting a reaction.
I eagered forward in my chair and then slumped back. ‘Unless my uncle took them with him to New York when he cleared out.’
My imaginary Theo shrugged, which had the look of a praying mantis trying to slough its skin. ‘Perhaps. But maybe he didn’t. It’s worth a try.’
I could have hugged him, except of course he wasn’t there, and because even if he had have been, it might have brought on another poem. Instead, I windowed the empty drive, void of his gangling figure, and in that way thanked him by missing him more.
Theo was right. Although my upbringing had unworldlied me, I knew from my reading that nobody goes through this life or even a part of it without something of them being somewhere written down. I must be documented like anybody else; all I had to do was a paper chase. Blithe was a big house, but there were not many places where papers would be kept.
I started next morning in the library since there was plenty of paper there. I was looking for anything that wasn’t an out-and-out book, a ledger perhaps, or some kind of file. You would think that in four years’ free run of the place I would have happened across such if it were there, but you have to remember that not only was this room immense (it rhymes with Florence), but also that until now it had been only books that interested me.
Well, I fruitlessed a whole week of library mornings. I upsidedowned the place, deshelving what seemed like every book, opening them and giving them a good shake to release any hidden document they might contain; there was none. I up-and-downed the ladders until I made myself dizzy; my nose stung and my head ached from an overdose of dust, but nothing did I find.
The afternoons I glummed away in my tower, too distracted to read, blinding myself by gazing out at the snow, as if hoping to see some clue writ there as to where the papers I sought might lie. At last it began to obvious me that although my uncle might not have had any use for books when he quit Blithe, he had certainly taken all his documents with him. I hopelessed finding any here.
Then, that afternoon, when I had all but given up on my quest and did not even think of it, chance threw a possible answer my way. I had torn my stocking on a nail on one of the library ladders and as it was my last pair, thought it might be a good excuse for a trip into town; we children hardly ever went there, perhaps only three or four times a year, but I thought Mrs Grouse might let John drive me. It would distraction me from the desperation of my lonely days.
So I knocked upon the door of her sitting room and, gaining no reply, and seeing the door not fastened but slightly ajar, pushed it open. The room was empty. She must be in the kitchen on some errand, or perhaps outside, in the barn, giving John some instruction or other. I idled about the room, glancing at the ornaments upon her mantel and the half-done embroidery basking upon her armchair. Eventually I came to her desk and, for want of anything better to do, found myself straightening her blotter, which was lying any which way on the desk top, and lining it up neatly with the inkwell and her pen. And then, feeling impish, I plumped myself down in her desk chair, thinking to experience what it might be like to be her. ‘Florence, where have you been?’ I sterned aloud to my imaginary self, contriting the other side of the desk, hands behind back, head hung low. ‘I have told you a hundred ti—’ but then I was interrupted, for before me I saw what I should have thought of when I first began my search.
The desk had two drawers, side by side. I upglanced the door to certain Mrs Grouse wasn’t about to return, and having coast-cleared, grabbed the brass handle of the right-hand drawer and slid it open. Inside lay Mrs Grouse’s fat account book, which I had seen upon her desk a thousand times. Having upglanced again, I lifted it out to see what other treasure the drawer might contain. It was full of pieces of paper, separated into little piles, all neatly clipped together with hairgrips. I picked them up one after another and disappointed straightway. They were nothing but bills, this pile from the grocer, that from the livery stable, that from the draper. There was nothing more. I replaced them and the account book and closed the drawer.
At that moment I heard voices outside in the passage. Mrs Grouse and Meg. She would be in the room any moment. There was no time to examine the second drawer without being red-handed, I had to get out of her chair fast and distance myself from the desk or face the consequences, but…well, I could not help myself, I had to see what that drawer contained. I heart-in-mouthed as I reached for the handle, for I could hear the approach of footsteps outside, Mrs Grouse about to enter. Nevertheless, I grasped the handle and tugged and…nothing happened. The drawer stuck fast, it was locked.
At that moment the door of the room began to open and I near cried out in alarm at being so caught when I heard again Meg’s voice from afar, the other end of the corridor, and Mrs Grouse – for it was she at the door – pause to answer. I upped the chair and skiptoed fast to the other side of the room and stood innocenting out the window when behind me the housekeeper entered the room.
‘Oh, there you are, Florence. Was there something you wanted?’
I told her about the stocking, which led to a discussion that I was growing fast and needed new clothes. ‘Let me have a look at the account book and see what we can manage,’ she said and I heart-in-mouthed again as she slid open the drawer, terrified she might notice some disarrangement of its contents. She did not, and, satisfied that Blithe could afford it, sanctioned a trip for the morrow, herself and I, into town.
The trip to our little town distracted me, though not in the welcome way of one who is bored, but rather by diverting me from my urgent task. The next few days I mooned around the house, unlibrarying in the morning, untowering the afternoons, for I could think of nothing but that locked drawer and how I might obtain the key.
I almost salivated every time Mrs Grouse passed me by, the jingle-jangle of her household keys upon the great iron ring she wore on her belt sounding as a dinner bell to a starving man. It impossibled I should steal them, for she would miss them the moment they were gone, even suppose I could magick the ring from around her belt, which, all my wishes notwithstanding, I could not.
My opportunity came one day as it darked and I saw her through the drawing-room window, outside, talking animatedly to John. Their discussion appeared somewhat heated, on her part, that is, for John never lost his temper. It evidented she was reprimanding him; no doubt he had wasted some little bit of something somewhere, for she was tasked by my uncle to keep all spending at Blithe on a tight rein. This was my chance. I dashed from the house and breathlessed up to her.
‘Mrs Grouse, Mrs Grouse!’ I shouted as I approached.
She annoyed me a look at the interruption. ‘Whatever is it now, child?’
‘Please, Mrs Grouse, I have dropped my needle on the floor of my bedroom and cannot look for it, for I haven’t a candle. Would you fetch me a new one, please?’
She exasperated a sigh. She had been full-flowing her complaint and did not want to be cut off. In a trice she unclipped the key ring from her belt and held it out to me by a particular key. ‘Here, Florence, unlock the large armoire in the storeroom and take one out – only one, mind – then lock the cupboard and bring the keys straight back here to me.’
I skipped off. Now, normally this would have been a rare chance to purloin an extra library candle or two, but I unheeded that. I straighted to the housekeeper’s sitting room and her desk. Then began an anxiety of trying keys. There must have been some thirty keys on that great jangling hoop and I knew I had but a minute or two at most to find the one I wanted. It obvioused that most were too big, great door keys that they were, so I concentrated on the dozen or so small keys that doubtlessed for cupboards and drawers. I lucked it the fourth one I tried. It slipped gratefully into the lock like a child into a warm bed on a cold night. It turned with a satisfying click.
I was tempted to open the drawer and it was all I could do to stop myself, but I knew that if I did and found something I would be powerless not to look at it and so would end up redhanding me. I left the drawer unlocked, which all along had been my strategy, and hastened back outside. There was no time now to visit the storeroom for the candle and so I had to hope that Mrs Grouse would not think of it or, if she did, assume it was in my pocket and not ask to see it.
As it was, it fortuned she was still so busy complaining John she simply took the keys from me without a word or even a glance and I awayed fast before she turned her attention to me. I made my way up to my room and from under my bed pulled out the box of old dolls and other such childish things that were long unplayed these days. This was where I kept my secrecy of bedtime books, for no one but me ever looked in it. It was also the hidery for my purloinery of candles, which I needed for the library and for reading in bed at night; I filched one whenever I could. For instance, whenever I aloned in the drawing room I would remove a candle from its holder, break off the bottom half, secrete it in my pocket and replace the top part; nobody ever noticed the candles were growing shorter. In the double candelabra I operated on both candles this way, to keep the appearance of them burning at the same rate.
Tonight I intended to open the drawer I had unlocked and inspect the contents, if any, and for that I would need my own candle. I could not risk lighting Mrs Grouse’s sitting-room candles. She might notice next day that they had mysteriously burned down overnight; and in the event of anyone hearing me and coming into the room, even if I heard them approach and managed to snuff the candles first, they might see them smoking or spot that the wax was warm and soft. My own candle I could snuff and then push under the rug next to Mrs Grouse’s desk, for retrieval in the morning.
My intention was to pretend to nightwalk, which I had often done before when I sleeplessed and wanted to library during the night. My nightwalks had been described often enough to me to know just how I should walk, as regards posture, pace, facial expression and so on, but there was an extra difficulty this time: because my nightgown was unpocketed, I could not carry candle and matches with me, for if caught it would obvious my trip was planned and not a nightwalk at all. So I took my candle and matches downstairs and hid them in the top of a plant pot in the hall. The plant was some bushy thing with leaves like a jungle, under which my lighting equipment would not be seen.
That night I lated awake in my bed listening to the sounds of the old house as it settled itself down for the night, the creakings and groanings as it relaxed after a hard day of containing all we people and all our hopes and fears and secrets. Now and then I heard the little girl in the attic above me, pirouetting across the boards. At last, somewhere a clock struck midnight and, satisfied that all human sounds had ceased, I slipped from my bed.
I downstairsed quick as I could in the dark, which was not fast, for having to careful not to bump into things and wake the house. I eventuallied the hall and felt about for the plant pot and, finding it, plunged my hands into its spidery leaves. I felt about on the soil, this way and that, and did not touch the candle or the matches. From somewhere above came the groan of a sleeper restlessing and turning over. My heart was a poundery of panic now. I alarmed that someone had found the candle and matches, perhaps Mary when she tended to the plants, the which meant that not only was my mission defeated but that tomorrow I would be exposed.
The picture of Mary watering the plants suddened me an inspiration. Of course, there was more than one plant! I was at the wrong pot. I blindmanned my hands before me and felt about and came upon another pot, the twin of my first encounter, and sure enough, there were my candle and matches. I paused and put my hand to my brow, which was slick with sweat, even though the night was cold and my feet frozen on the bare boards.
I struck a match and lit the candle, found the door to Mrs Grouse’s sitting room and swifted inside, closing the door quietly behind me. I stood and lofted the candle, surveying the room, to check it was empty, for my mind half expected to find Mrs Grouse sitting there, waiting and watching to catch me out, canny old fowl that she was. There was no one.
I overed to the desk, set my candle down carefully on top of it and sat in its owner’s chair. The brass handle of the left drawer was cold and forbidding to my touch. My big fear was that Mrs Grouse would have discovered its unlockery and locked it again. For I had no idea what she stored in there or how often she opened it. Why did she keep it locked in the first place? Perhaps because the household money was kept there. And if so, what if she had needed some today to pay a tradesman or the servants? I deep-breathed and pulled. The drawer yielded, although very stiff and unwilling. I slid it out slowly, gritting my teeth at its complaining rasp, feeling sure the whole household must be woken by it. But I could not wait to listen, for inside I saw a single object, a large, leather-bound book, its layer of dust testifying to its long undisturbery.
I swallowed and gingerlied it out, as if it were some holy relic, some saint’s bones that, roughly handled, might turn to dust. I placed the book on the desk and opened it and saw at once what it was, an album of photographs, such as the one Mary had once showed me, of all her family, going back years.
The first page held but one picture, a man in a business suit standing in front of Blithe House. I instanted who it was, for it was the same face as the painting on the turn of the stairs: my uncle. He had the same bold stare, the same slight play of amusement about his lips. I turned the page. Here he was again, but this time pictured in some photographer’s studio, next to a potted plant. Beside him stood a woman in a white dress, a beautiful woman, her arm linked in his, smiling too, but with a free and easy happiness, not at all like the man, who, looking again, I saw was pleased with himself, like an angler prouding it alongside some big fish he has landed.
I turned the page and found another picture of my uncle, again with a woman, but whether or not it was the same woman, I could not tell, for the photograph had been cut, a ragged square hole where the woman’s head should have been. This shivered me in the silent night and I over-my-shouldered, suddening a feeling of a man standing there with a knife as if to do to me what had been done to the woman in the picture. There was no one there, though already I began to see shapes in the shadowy corners of the room. I looked again at the photograph, at the decapitated woman, and calmed me a little, telling myself it was quite understandable, that someone had removed her head to place it in a locket or some such. It did not sinister in the least. Then I turned back to the first photograph and then once more to the second. The women were not the same person, for the first woman was taller, much taller than this one, which I could see despite the absence of the second’s head. She must have been shorter by half a foot.
