Florence and Giles (10 page)

Giles having been found and then told to get lost again, Theo returned and sadly plonked himself down next to me. He sat glumly contemplating the loveliness of the day. Eventually he spoke. ‘Florence, I was wondering…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I was wondering, seeing as I’m going away and all and won’t be seeing you for half a year, if I might, well, you know, kiss you, perhaps? If you’re agreeable this time, that is.’ He anxioused a look at me.

I stared back at him. He had those great ball eyes and a
girl just couldn’t romantic him. He was simply too lantern-jawed and long and bony everywhere. He would be a sharp and uncomfortable person to get into a hug with. Nevertheless, I was not inclined to send him away with a refusal.

‘Does it involve a poem?’ I said.

‘Why, I’m afraid not. Darn it, would you believe I haven’t got one today? I’m real sorry about that, truly I am.’

‘Well in that case, the answer is yes.’ And I inclined my head away from him, proffering him a cheek, but he ducked his head and snuck around the front and pinged me one on the lips.

‘Why, Theo,’ I said, ‘that was a sneaky thing to do to a girl.’

‘I know it,’ he said, somehow both bashful and boastful at once. We sat and contemplated the day some more. It didn’t seem right to feel so miserable on such a good day. A tear watermarked my cheek.

Theo reached up one of his oversized digits and gentled it away. ‘Why, Florence, it ain’t so bad. It’s only six months. It’ll soon pass.’

‘No, Theo, you don’t understand.’ And then I blurted him the whole thing, about Miss Taylor and how I had found her walking the house in the night without any light, something no human being but only a ghost or some such could manage, and how she had stood over the sleeping body of my little brother licking her chops and how I feared that at the very least she meant to steal him away from me.

‘Promise me, Theo, promise me that if you return from Europe and anything bad has happened to Giles or me, you won’t rest until that woman has been made to pay. Promise me that.’

‘Why, Florence, don’t talk so, it cannot be so bad as all that. I mean, ghosts! Come now, aren’t you imagining a bit strong here?’

‘Promise me, Theo.’

He shrugged and then, seeing how earnest I was, seized both my hands in his, making a little nest for them, and looked into my eyes and said, ‘I promise, Florence, I surely do.’

The Van Hoosier carriage couldn’t have been more than halfway down the drive when Miss Taylor was behind us at the front door, from where Giles and I were watching Theo and his mother disappear from our lives for at least six months, and perhaps, I reflected bitterly, perhaps, for ever.

‘Oh! Have I missed them?’ she said in a way that made me think she ought to be in the same theatre company as Giles when he pretended never to have been in the library before, it so unconvinced. ‘Well, perhaps they will call again soon.’

Giles’s wave died in mid-air as the carriage finally turned into the main road and disappeared from view. ‘Oh, no, miss, not for a long time. Not for months and months.’

‘Oh, how so?’

She casualled as though uninterested, but did I detect just a hint of triumph on her lips, the ghost of a smile?

Giles looked up at her as she closed the door, drawing us back inside. ‘Theo is going to Italy and France and all those sorts of places. It’s the other side of the Atlantic, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes, miss, you see those places are in Europe on one side of the ocean and we’re here in the Americas on the other side and it’s three thousand miles between.’

Our new governess let go Giles’s misunderstanding. ‘What a shame,’ she said, meaningfulling me a glance. ‘We shall just be on our own, then, shan’t we?’ She turned and started off toward the stairs and we followed her.

‘Are you feeling better, miss?’ puppied Giles, catching her up.

‘Oh, yes, thank you, Giles, I’m much better now.’

And the way she louded that last word, flinging it back over her shoulder, I knew it was meant just for me.

Afterward, lying in my bed, I thought of Theo and how I would miss him and how his enforced abandonment of me left me wholly in the clutches of this fiend, for such I believed her to be, and that led me on to considering the morning’s visit and how Miss Taylor had suddened her faint. Her quick recovery obvioused it to me that she had not been ill at all, but had feigned the whole thing, and there could be but one reason for that, namely that she had wished to avoid meeting Theo and his mother.

I puzzled me awhile over that. Why would she wish to avoid them? What could it mean? I tossed and turned, which was beginning to be my normal bedtime routine these nights, ever since she came.

I eventuallied several thoughts. What was it about Mrs Van Hoosier that made Miss Taylor shun her presence? The answer had to be that Mrs Van Hoosier was not a servant but gentlefolk, and therefore not under the same constraints as Mrs Grouse and Meg and Mary and the like. She would be at liberty to make inquiries to Miss Taylor, to question her about her birth and family and where else she had governessed before. A woman like Mrs Van Hoosier struck me as someone who would worm the secrets out of a stone
– though, of course, Miss Taylor couldn’t know that. But no matter what Theo’s mother’s character might have been, it obvioused that our new governess wished to avoid any investigation into her past.

Other things struck me too. Mrs Grouse and Meg and John and Mary were simple folk who did not look beyond the obvious. Someone of a superior class likelied to be that much more observant. What if in future the police – my old friend the captain, perhaps – should be involved? What if Miss Taylor seized my brother and vanished, or – I hated even to think the word – murdered him and then disappeared? A woman of Mrs Van Hoosier’s station would be more likely to provide an accurate description of her, to be able to place her accent, identify her clothing and provide other clues that might lead to her eventual detection and arrest. All this Miss Taylor had sought to avoid.

If I were right (and what other motives could Miss Taylor have had for avoiding the Van Hoosiers?), then something else must also be true. That what Miss Taylor was planning was expected to be executed before the Van Hoosiers returned, or she would not have been so pleased by the news of their temporary absence. Whatever it was, it was going to happen in less than six months, it was going to happen soon.

Only one thing did not make sense to me. If her object was to harm Giles, then why not do it now? Unless, of course, she wanted to fake some accident to him so that she was not held responsible and was waiting only until she precised the means. If that were so then it might be at any time. Chance might sudden it and she advantage the opportunity on the spur of the moment. I would have to watch her like a hawk.

But if she meant simply to take Giles, and her seeming fondness for him seemed to suggest this, then why not simply
act now? What on earth was she waiting for? At first this bothered me because it did not make sense, until I began to think about what might happen after she had taken him. Suppose it was for a ransom, then she would have to steal him away and keep him hidden and perhaps for some considerable time before the ransom was paid. To even take Giles away she would need his cooperation and before she could guarantee that she would have to gain his confidence, something not to be done in a minute. And if it were not for a ransom, if she intended to keep Giles for ever, then she would need first to gain a secure place in his affection.

That was it! That was surely it! She was merely waiting until Giles was sufficiently attached to her to swallow some story she would tell him about why he must steal away with her, and subsequently remain with her, and then she would be gone. It so obvioused I kicked myself that I hadn’t seen it before. And she had libraried me to keep me out of her hair while she practised her wiles on Giles, every day inching him further and further away from me. Why, already he had forgotten the incident at breakfast, her sudden terrifying outburst of anger, and fawned about her as though she were the most wonderful person who ever lived. I resolved to speak to Giles about it, to warn him of the danger he was running.

Next day, though, it far from easied to find a time when I could alone him. Miss Taylor fetched him from his room first thing and took him down to breakfast with her and from then on they togethered almost always. It was only now when I sought to speak to him that I realised how much she had already sequestered him from me, how rarely the two of us ever aloned together any more. Eventually we were let out to play in the gardens as a relief from lessons for Giles,
and to fresh-air us both. Even then, Miss Taylor accompanied us outside and seated herself on a recliner on the terrace, from which she watchful-eyed us. At one point, when I moved close to Giles and began to whisper that I needed to talk to him urgently, I looked up to see her already outseated and heading toward us. I instanted away from him and shouted out, ‘Can’t catch me, can’t catch me!’ and took off into the shrubbery, Giles tumbling after me.

As you will remember, the shrubbery was neglected and overgrown. I sped through it, following a path that Giles and I knew well but a newcomer would have difficulty in discerning, my brother at my heels. Somewhere I could hear Miss Taylor threshing around in the uncontrolled jungle, blundering after us. I hid myself in a rhododendron bush and listened for Giles’s footsteps. As he passed by, I reached out an arm, grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the bush, my other hand clamping his mouth before he had a chance to cry out. I silent-fingered him to keep quiet and we lay like that, hardly breathing, until we heard Miss Taylor go crashing past. When I was quite sure she was gone, I whispered to him, ‘Giles, I have to talk to you.’

He squirmed under my grip. ‘I don’t want to talk. We can talk any time. This isn’t the time for talking, it’s the time for play.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I hissed. ‘We don’t ever have time to talk like we used to. We’re never alone any more. I can’t talk to you without Miss Taylor hearing everything. Have you not noticed?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose. But then, what does it matter if she hears? Why should we care?’

‘Because I am sure she is not who she pretends to be. I think she has come here for some evil purpose of her own.
I am half convinced she isn’t human, that she is some kind of being from the spirit world, some sort of ghost.’

Giles excited at this, although I could see he was more than a little afraid, too. ‘A ghost? But why should she come here if she has no connection to Blithe? Whose ghost could she be?’

I bit my lip. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t figured that bit out yet.’

He thought too, a process that never lasted very long with Giles, wrinkling his brow. After perhaps half a minute his face suddened alight. ‘I know! It’s obvious, Flo, truly it is. She must be the ghost of Miss Whitaker, come back to the place where she met her untimely death…’

‘Oh Giles,’ I despaired, ‘don’t be silly. She’s nothing like Miss Whitaker. They don’t even have the same kind of hair.’

‘You can’t know that, Flo. Who says ghosts keep the same appearance as they had when they were alive? Maybe they disguise themselves to fool the people who are still living.’

Giles was building this up into a great game, a big pretend that he no more believed than I did, which was not at all serving my purpose. ‘Giles, you have to listen to me. You have to take care. You must not let her steal her way into your affections. She wants to gain your trust so that she can trick you into going away with her.’

Giles stared at me, amazed. Then he chuckled. ‘But why should she do that, Flo?’ He looked at me as though at a stranger. ‘Flo, you do say the oddest things.’ His brow wrinkled again. ‘Anyway, if she is Miss Whitaker, why should she want to harm me, or you, come to that? Perhaps she just wants to haunt the last place she knew when she was alive. Perhaps she liked being our governess and wanted to do it again. Perhaps –’

At that moment there was a rustling nearby and before I could say another word to my brother, the leaves of the rhododendron parted, revealing in the gap Miss Taylor’s face. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, falsing a smile, ‘my two lost chickens. Come now, children, you’ve had long enough for play. It’s time to get back to our books.’

The following day we took a picnic down to the lake. Again Miss Taylor walked around it until she came to the spot on the shore nearest the place where Miss Whitaker had tragicked. On the way she hadn’t spoken, but pulled ahead of us; it seemed she couldn’t wait to get there, as if tugged by some invisible force. We spread out our food and Giles and I ate heartily, our appetites stimulated by the fresh air, but Miss Taylor so picked at her food that it made me watch her in a way I never had before at a meal and notice that she made no attempt to eat anything. The day was hot and after we had finished, Giles, who had brought his fishing pole, settled himself down on the bank to fish. Miss Taylor outed a book from her reticule and began to read.

I suddenly felt exhausted. The intensity of the sun, the oppressiveness of the air, its closeness presaging a thunderstorm, difficulted it to breathe. I tireded and headached; my limbs heavied and I lay back on the picnic rug and, no matter how I tried to fight it, could not prevent my eyelids from drooping and then shutting. I thought that if I closed them for only one minute, that’s all, a single paltry minute, I should recover my senses.

I know not how long I slept. At some point I heard the
drone of a bee, the whine of mosquitoes, the gentle disturbance of the lake’s surface as a fish stirred, and then such a silence, such a stillness in the air, that something icy fingered my spine and tickled my neck. I instanted something was wrong and bolt-uprighted and eye-opened all in one movement.

I frighted naturally for Giles; he was my first thought, but there he was, down by the shore, sitting over his pole just as he had been before I slept, so that I did not know whether I had unconscioused for a mere minute or for an hour or even longer; there was no way of telling. I looked around for Miss Taylor but could see no sign of her. Her book lay open and face down upon the picnic rug, but she was nowhere to be found. Then something in that stillness, something in the icy tiptoe up and down my spine, said to me to look at the lake, not down at the shore where Giles sat, but at the lake itself, across to the middle, at the spot I never wanted to look at, the place where Miss Whitaker had misfortuned, and there I saw her, Miss Taylor, out upon the water, the most amazing sight, so that I thought I dreamed or hallucinated, except that it was all so real. She was on the surface of the water, but without any boat. She was standing there, in the very centre of the lake, the water lapping about her shoes, although, as I had good reason to know, there was nothing there to stand upon, no submerged jetty, no little island or sand bar. She was gazing down at the water with a melancholy expression, or rather something of that in her posture, for I could not discern her features from so great a distance, and then, sensing my eyes upon her, she looked up and stared right at me and, it felt, through me, so that I imagined her eyes glazed over, blank like those of a sculpted figure, and I couldn’t tell whether or no she saw me at all.
Suddenly she began to walk across the water, sending up little splashes every time her feet struck its surface, striding fast and purposefully toward me, so that I had but one thought, namely to run, to run away from this terrible vision.

‘Giles!’ I called, for always I feared me most for my little brother. ‘Giles! Look up!’ I rose from the ground and began to downhill to him. He showed no sign of having heard me nor of having seen the…the thing upon the water. ‘Giles!’ I essayed again. I was nearly upon him now and the figure on the water was driving for us still.

This time he heard me. He looked up at me, bemused. ‘What, Flo? What’s the matter? You shouldn’t go shouting like that, you’ll scare the fish.’

‘Look out upon the lake,’ I gasped, reaching him and putting my arm about his shoulders, to steer his gaze. ‘Look!’

He looked instead at me, eyes alarmed, evidently frightened by my agitation, but after a moment did as I injuncted and looked out across the water. I watched his face, awaiting his reaction. He screwed up his eyes, puzzled, then turned to me.

‘What? What am I meant to be looking at, Flo?’

I shook him somewhat. ‘Do you not see? Do you not see her?’

‘Who, Flo? Who?’

‘Why, Miss Taylor, of course, walking across the lake!’

He stared me hard. ‘Don’t be silly, Flo, how could she do that?’

I shook him roughly. ‘You must see! You must!’ I turned him to face the lake once more. ‘Tell me you do not see the witch, striding over the water!’

Giles rubbed his eyes with one hand. ‘I – I think I do. I – I, yes, Flo, I see her! I really can, you know.’

I followed his gaze across the water. There was no one there. She was gone.

I released my grip upon him. It obvioused he was lying to appease me and had seen nothing at all untoward. He looked up at me, muting an appeal. ‘I think I saw her, Flo.’

I stared at him a moment, then looked once more at the lake, which nothinged still. I looked upon the empty water, watching the breeze wrinkle its surface, wondering me if it had happened at all. There was a rustle behind me, the sound of leaves in the wind, and, even before she spoke, I knew she was there.

‘Well, children,’ she said, ‘I think that is enough relaxation for one day, don’t you? We must be getting back to our work.’ I turned and looked her in the eye. It was the snake’s eye that gazed back at me, sure of itself, and I certained she knew I had seen her out on the lake, and what was worse, much worse, that she didn’t in the least bit care.