Florence and Giles (15 page)

Setting it down, I held my breath, thinking I should have alarmed her, but no, the crooning unabated. Carefulling, so as not to disturb any more of her knicknackery, I stretched out the cloak and draped it over the mirror. Then I picked up the matches and struck one, the sound of which noised to me like the rasp of John’s great iron shovel when he is scraping ice off the walkways, so after I had lit the candle, I waited a few moments, until once more I certained all was well. There still being no interruption of the crooning, I began my search. On the table itself there was nothing other than the usual accoutrements of womanhood, brushes, and bottles of lotion and scent, a tablet of some sweet-smelling soap. The dressing table had two drawers, one on either side of the keyhole where you put your legs when you sat at it. I drew open the right-hand one first. It contained some dollar bills which, although I had no time to count them, seemed to me quite a hoard for a mere governess. Beside them I found a newspaper clipping that I recognised immediately, for it was a report I had myself seen before of the Whitaker inquest.

At this moment there was a cough from next door, which I recognised as Giles’s, and I heard Miss Taylor’s voice, ‘Shh, shh, sleep, my love, there is nothing here to fear.’

I closed the drawer and opened its fellow on the other side. It contained nothing but some smelling salts and a bottle of liquid with a label bearing the name of a New York drug store. I had no time to study it now, for I anxioused I had already been too long in the room, so reluctanted it back into the drawer and closed it.

I went to the bed and felt beneath the pillows. I underedged the mattress all round with my hand, nothing. I looked under the bed and saw Miss Taylor’s two valises. I crawled under and opened their clasps, but they were completely empty.

I opened her closet and searched the pockets of her coat and her dresses. Empty! I gentled the door of the closet shut and stood and looked around and puzzled me some more. There was nowhere else to look. The top of the nightstand was bare and its cupboard contained nothing more than a spare candle and an empty glass. Then my eye caught sight of the occasional table I remembered from the Whitaker days, over by the door to the corridor through which I’d come. I picked up my candle from the dressing table and tiptoed swiftly across to it. I slid open the table drawer but disappointed when I saw it contained nothing but a Bible. I was about to close the drawer when I noticed something, a corner of paper, poking from between the covers of the book. I set my candle down on the tabletop and took the book out. I opened it and two pieces of card fell out. I picked them up and saw straightway what they were. Tickets! My heart near stopped as I read the print on one.
SS Europa. New York to Le Havre. November 14th. First Class. Cabin Port D14. Sailing at midnight.
The other was exactly the same.

My brain overwhelmed. I dizzied and could scarce keep upright, indeed had to stretch out a hand to the table to steady myself. November 14th. It was but two weeks hence. Two weeks! Two tickets! And that was when she meant to take Giles away. And not just away from Blithe but out of the country, to Europe, to France no less, where I would have no chance to follow her or ever get him back.

There suddened a difference in the room and it took me
a split-second to realise what it was. Silence! The crooning next door had stopped dead. There was no time to lose. Keeping the tickets in one hand, with the other I hurried the Bible back into the drawer and closed it. Footsteps sounded from Giles’s room, approaching the communicating door. It fortuned I was right next to the door into the corridor. In one movement I reached out and grabbed the handle, blew out my candle, opened the door, swifted through it and closed it behind me at the self-same moment as the door from my brother’s room opened, the sound of the latter I hope masking that of the first. I stood in the corridor, leaning my back against the wall for support, near to fainting from what I had learned and from my narrow escape. I statued like that a whole minute or so, until the hoot of the owl broke my reverie, and it was then that I realised I had left behind my cloak.

Next morning I lated after having so much awaked during the night, first in the long wait to begin my nocturnal adventure, then in the thing itself, and afterward when I tossed and turned, anxiousing about what I had taken, the steamship tickets, and about what I had left behind, my cloak. It obvioused Miss Taylor would by now have found the cloak, for she could not have brushed her hair without doing so, but I guessed she had not yet missed the tickets, for if so I certained she would have broken in upon me long before now. Even so, I also awared that when she thought about me having been in her room it would not be so very long before she thought to check the tickets. I therefore dressed quickly, took the tickets from beneath my pillow, where I had slept upon them for safety’s sake, slipped them into the pocket of my frock and made my way, not to breakfast, but to the west wing. In the corridor I stopped at the mirror just before the library and looked into it, ignoring as best I could Miss Taylor’s livid face angering out at me, and made to adjust my hair, using both hands so that she should see they were empty. Then I proceeded past the library, off our governess’s map and upstairsed it to my tower. I felt underneath the seat of the captain’s chair and, with my penknife,
which I had brought with me for this purpose, slit open the leather. I slipped the tickets into the slit, pushing them into the stuffing and making sure they could not fall out.

Then I downstairsed to the library, where I picked up the book I had been reading there the day before,
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
, for I was back on Poe, even though he melancholied and frightened me, because somehow these days he suited my mood. Leaving the library, I made sure to slow past the mirror outside holding the book open before me and pretending to read from it. Seeing the book where before I had had none would, I hope, convince the watching fiend that I had merely libraried and not anywhere-else, so that she would not be driven to explore the tower.

As soon as I out-of-sighted the mirror, I hurried to the breakfast room. When I entered, Miss Taylor and Giles were already there, although from outside you might have thought not, for there was none of the usual chit-chat from Giles and none of Miss Taylor’s simpering replies. The sight which greeted me when I opened the door near made my knees give way. For opposite Miss Taylor, on the back of the chair that was always mine, was my cloak, stretched out like a big black crow, its wings resting on the neighbouring chairs on either side. It near breath stopped me, I was so shocked.

Giles looked up at me and opened his mouth, about to say something, but before he could speak, Miss Taylor laid a restraining hand upon his and he closed his lips and silenced. She challenged me a look, her snake eyes piercing mine. I lowered my eyes and meeked my way to my place, heart acrobatting about in its shell. Reaching my chair, I took hold of that impious bird of ill omen, my cloak, and lifted it off the backs of the chairs and then folded it and, sitting myself down in my seat, placed it on one of those next to me.

I looked up and defianted one straight at Miss Taylor, all but catching her unawares. She was quick to recover. ‘You left it in my room,’ she said, triumphing as one does who has caught someone out in a lie or some other despicable act.

I merely nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said and picked up my knife and fork.

She continued to stare at me for the rest of the meal, the food being nothing to her, who ate not even enough to notice. I didn’t hunger at all, my stomach so churned with apprehension for what might be to come, but I determined to give her no satisfaction, so munched my way through everything in front of me, although every mouthful only served to sicken me more.

It was not long before Giles commenced to restlessing, he and the governess having, of course, been breakfasting for some considerable time before my arrival, and eventually he said, ‘Please, miss, may we go now? I’m sure I’ve eaten enough to last me all day and you never eat so much as would keep a bird alive anyway…’

She unfastened her stare from me and looked at him as though she’d quite forgot he was there. ‘Of course, my dear,’ she murmured, and pushed back her chair. Giles stood up and rushed to the door and she followed him, in that stately silent way she had of moving, gliding across the floor as though walking on air. Only when she was halfway out the door did she pause, turn back and throw me a threatening one. ‘I will speak to you later, girl,’ she hissed, and for once it was not the manner in which she spoke, but the insolence of that word, ‘girl’, to one who, after all, she was employed to serve, that dreaded me quite, for it seemed to signal that we had moved beyond the boundaries of social propriety,
that the gloves were off and that she was ready for an almighty battle.

As soon as their footsteps faded, I rushed me to the WC and regurgitated all I had just consumed, though even after my stomach was quite, quite empty, so that I was only retching air, I could not stop my convulsions. It was as if my body desired to purge itself of everything that had polluted it for so long, all my guilt, all my fear of losing Giles, who was the one person I had to cling to in this cold hard world, all the poison the Whitaker witch both living and dead had put into my heart. I weaked and scarce abled to walk and began to cry, for I did not see how I could ever manage to go on.

Afterward I near cowarded and fled outside, where I should be safe from the dozens of pairs of eyes with which she followed my every movement and monitored my every expression and gesture from every wall of the house, so that it seemed as if at all times she could at will peer into my very soul, a thought that shuddered me quite.

But, as I neared the front door, meaning to make my exit, I caught sight of her in the mirror there, the one where I had first seen her, and the smirking arrogance of the simulacrum she had left there, which seemed to mock my very helplessness, altered my course. I had not let Whitaker drive me to despair when she’d been alive, when she did that dreadful thing, the thing that would hurt me most after losing Giles, that is, deprived me of books, and I would not crumple and give in to her now. If she wanted a fight she should have one, no matter what dark powers she had at her beck and call. I would wasp her picnic. I would spoil her plan. I would not give in. I am not made that way.

I turned and made my way back along the hall and
upstairsed to the schoolroom, where I found Giles sitting beside her at her desk. ‘Seven sevens, come on, Giles,’ she said, not unkindly, ‘it’s not that hard.’

‘Thirty-nine?’ hopefulled Giles. Math was not his strongest subject; then again, it would be hard to say what was.

She shook her head.

‘Well, then, thirty-seven? Or thirty-five. It’s some number or other, I know.’

She began to chuckle, and then you could see her face change when it was half the way to a smile, and turn serious, and she looked up, stared a long moment at me, then abruptly stood, so suddenly that her chair tipped backward and fell over. She made no move to right it again. Giles looked up in surprise. ‘What’s the matter, miss? I don’t mean to be so slow-witted. I am trying, honest I am.’

‘It’s not that, Giles,’ she muttered, unconvincing him a smile. Before he could say any more she glared me a look, then turned and rushed from the room.

Giles puzzled me one. ‘What’s going on, Flo? What was all that business with your cloak at breakfast? What have you been up to now? I sometimes think –’

He got no further, for at that moment the door crashed open and the governess burst into the room and ran straight at us, eyes wild, hair unkempt and flowing as though she’d pulled all the pins out in a rage, her mouth contorted in a mad grimace. She was on me in a trice and had hold of my hair. I thought she would scratch out my eyes with her nails, for she was waving them like talons in my face.

‘Where are they?’ she screamed. ‘What have you done with them, you little bitch?’

I could not help screaming too, for my hair hurt so. I tugged my head away and felt my scalp tear and saw I was
free, while she stood there with a clump of my hair in her hand. We faced one another, two beasts in a mortal combat, she one side of the desk, I the other. She made to go one way around it; I retreated the other. I sought then to escape back the way I had come; she blocked me off. It was like some wild dance of death as we each parried and thrust, but even as we were locked in this duel I knew that if nothing changed it was I who must be the loser, for as things were, I was trapped behind the desk and must eventually give in and be caught.

There was but one thing for it. The desk was only a light deal thing, no more than a table, really, with no drawers full of books to weigh it down. I set my fingers under the lips of the upper edge and with a mighty roar pushed it at her and tipped it at the same time, so that I overturned it and all but knocked her over too. Before she had chance to recover I acrossed the room and outed the open door.

I tore down the corridor with the ring of her boots on the floorboards behind me in hot pursuit. I took the back stairs three or four at a time and jumped the last six or seven in one go, near coming to grief as I stumbled at the bottom, but managing to steady myself at the last. All the while I could hear her screaming after me, ‘Where are they? Where are they, you little hussy?’

I came to a side door and wrenched it open and was out at last in the garden. I slammed the door shut and looked around hard. I considered the lake but then remembered her facility with water and that she would be able to shortcut across it, leaving me at a definite disadvantage. Then I thought of the other direction and the woods, which I had often walked through to meet Theo when he came through them to visit me, and we had same routed when I sometimes
accompanied him partway home. I knew them well and their hiding places too, for Giles and I had often hide-and-seeked there and, saving any special powers she might have of which I might yet be ignorant, I certained I would be her superior amongst the trees. At least she would have no spies watching me and I sured I could conceal me quite. I hitched up my skirts and started to run even as I heard the door open behind me. I didn’t, of course, think beyond getting away. I didn’t consider what would happen after all this, or how life could ever be normal again.

I had a good start on her and out in the open I moved faster, for my legs were younger. I heart-in-mouthed, though, even as I gained distance upon her, for I never forgot she was a spirit, not of this world, which made me fear all manner of things, especially that one of her witchy ways might be the ability to fly. Still, when I over-my-shouldered she was a good couple of hundred yards behind and I plunged into the woods. At first I kept to the trail, heading into the heart of the forest, but when the path forked I took the lesser of the two, and the same another hundred yards or so further on when it forked again. Now I was on something scarce recognisable as a path but that was in fact the route Theo and I had determined to be the shortest between his side of the woods and my own. It was not the quickest, though, for it went through thickets of dense bushes and shrubs, and places where the trees had dropped saplings, so that a body had to sideways to squeeze through the narrow gaps between them.

As the undergrowth thickened and the going became harder I began to tire and my progress slowed. At one point I disturbed some rooks and they took off from their tree with a great noise of cawing and flapping of wings, which
made me curse to myself for I knew it must have alerted my pursuer as to my general location. In a panic I bad decisioned and went off the route I knew into some bushes and soon found myself amongst brambles which reached out cruelly, as though perhaps my pursuer had some control over them, tearing at my frock with their thorny tendrils. Soon I was quite caught, and had to stop, give myself a quiet talking-to to calm me, for struggling only made the situation worse, and patiently and carefully unpick the barbs that held me, as if they were some of my many bad stitches when Whitaker had made me sew.

At last I got myself free and staggered into a small clearing, but scarce had time to celebrate this when there was another sudden flight of rooks, the cause almost immediately apparenting in a great commotion in the direction whence I had come. It so louded I convinced it must be a deer crashing through the undergrowth, for I could hear branches snapping as whatever it was forced its way through. I stared at the trail it was making, for I could not see the thing itself, only the shaking of the saplings and shrubs it disturbed, and at first I did not afraid, for I knew it was not the time of year for deer to attack. But then, as I waited for the beast to arrive and pass, I caught a glimpse of something black amongst the shaking leaves and knew I was undone, for there are no black deer and it could be but one thing, the governess’s dress. I transfixed with fear, unable to think for a moment which way to turn and flee. There seemed to be no passage out of the clearing any better than the route that had brought me there, but as I prevaricated the bushes before me broke apart and there stood Miss Taylor, face livid, practically snorting with rage. She made to rush me but staggered back and I realised she was still held by the brambles, as I
had been. I turned and, without thought, plunged into the bushes in front of me.

I crashed my way through them. When thorns grasped my dress, I snatched it from them, heedless of any rips or tears. No matter what the obstacle, I forced my way through. I could hear my pursuer close behind me and expected any moment to feel her hot breath on my neck. But then, at last, I burst out of the thicket and onto a footpath. I was free! Not only that but I had chanced upon the path I had first been on, the one that led to the Van Hoosier side of the woods, not that I could hope for any help there, for the house was all shut up with the family away. Not thinking beyond immediate escape, I took to my heels and ran for all I was worth and certained I was at last leaving my pursuer behind. Thinking I had put some distance between us, without breaking my stride I over-my-shouldered to check. She was nowhere in sight and I was just congratulating myself, laughing wildly as I ran, when my foot struck something hard – a tree root – and over I went, unable to stifle a cry of pain as my ankle turned and I went down on it with my full weight. I lay there, my face in the dust, knowing full well my ankle was quite useless. I could hear her panting breath behind me, coming ever closer. And then I heard a noise in front of me that sounded something like a human cough. I lifted my eyes and saw before me, no more than a few inches away, a pair of black brogues. I lifted my head to see further and found myself looking at a pair of long heron legs I knew well and had never thought to see again.