Florence and Giles (9 page)

‘Yes, miss. Thank you, miss.’ I concentrated hard on cutting up my chop.

‘And I slept through the whole thing,’ said Giles gaily.

‘Yes, my dear, you slept through the whole thing.’ Miss Taylor reached out and ruffled his hair. I wanted to protest, for no one else had ever so familiared with either of us, but how could I when Giles fond-puppied a look up at her? I near expected him to lick her hand. Had he already forgotten the incident at breakfast yesterday? But then, that was Giles all over. I well imagined how he had responded to those bullies at his school, not with resentment, but with gratitude when, during those intervals when they did not tease or hurt him, they showed him any little act of kindness, no matter how trivial or even unconscious on their part.

Miss Taylor turned to me. ‘I have some understanding of sleepwalking. I believe it to be the result of an idle brain, an
imagination that has not enough to occupy it and so looks for things that are not there.’ This sounded like a warning of some kind. She paused and took a sip of her coffee, swilling it around her mouth awhile before swallowing and continuing. ‘You have been let run wild with nothing to keep you busy. It has done you no favours. I am going to rectify that.’

‘Miss Whitaker had me sewing, though I confess I wasn’t much use at it.’

‘Pah! Sewing.’ She looked angry, but then softened somewhat. ‘Well, of course there are things a young lady is expected to learn, but this is 1891. The days when ladies merely played the piano and painted a little – and badly – and embroidered useless things are on their way out. I am of the opinion that all women, and you’re no different, need a little more stimulation than that.’

She wiped her lips with her napkin and stood up. She expectanted us a look and Giles and I understood that this meant breakfast was over. We leapt to our feet too and she straightway marched off with us in her wake.

‘Where are we going?’ I called out as we hurried after her.

She flung her reply over her shoulder, words I had thought never to hear. ‘Why, where else? To the library!’

That night there was no wind howlery; nevertheless I restlessed in bed, not so much because I anxioused, although there was some of that – how could there not be after I had seen Miss Taylor greeding over Giles in his bed? – but rather for the reason that I could not help turning over and over the events of the day. Such a lot had happened; leastways for a girl who had spent most of her life mausoleumed in Blithe. There was something good and something bad, and though the bad thing was a rook in a snowdrift, the good thing was very good – our visit to the library. Giles and I had trailed behind Miss Taylor as she marched her way there, too out-breathed by her purposeful pace to speak but wideeyeing one another as we struggled to keep up. What did it mean, that she was taking us to the library? Did Mrs Grouse know? Did my uncle? I surely didn’t think he could or he would not have allowed it after forbidding it for so many years.

Our new governess stopped outside the library and let us catch up. Then she flung open the door and stepped aside and with a gentle shove at our backs ushered us into the room. We stood in the doorway, open-mouthing what met us, disbelieving our own eyes. The drapes had been pulled
back and sunlight rushed into the room, filling the vacuum where it had been denied for so long. The accumulation of dust from many years had been swept from the floor, and Mary was even now at the windows, rubbing away at the glass with her cloth. A couple of the windows were open, although that regretted me somewhat, because, for all the late-summer freshness breezing in, I lacked the usual comforting fusty smell of ancient books.

‘All right, Mary, you can finish that later, if you please,’ brusqued Miss Taylor, and Mary at once straightened up, picked up her bucket of water, said ‘Yes, ma’am’ in such a way as to seem to make a curtsey of it, although she didn’t so much as bend a knee, and fled from the room.

As the door closed behind her Miss Taylor turned to us. Giles anxioused a few glances from her to me and I knew he was merely obviousing my own thought. What were we to do now? Should we butter-wouldn’t-melt it and act as if we had never seen the place before? Or should we assume she had figured it out and therefore just come clean?

Giles, as usual, so nervoused he blundered the whole thing. ‘Gee,’ he said, gazing around in a very theatrical way, ‘so many books. Who would have thought it?’

Miss Taylor watched him with just the twitch of a smile, but not without fondness; it seemed as if she couldn’t look at Giles without licking her lips, and I understood as I saw that smile that she knew all about my visits to the library. Still, I wasn’t about to come right out and admit it, so I turned away and strolled slowly around the room, spine-fingering a book or two here, touching the side of a bookshelf there. In this roundabout fashion, I made my way to the back of the room, toward the chaise longue behind which I secreted my blankets and candle. As I rounded the chaise, casual as you
please, or at least so I hoped, Miss Taylor’s voice floated across the room to me, much as the motes of dust, stirred up by Mary no doubt, drifted in the beams of sunlight shafting through the long windows. ‘It’s not there, your little linen cupboard. I had it all taken away.’

I turned to brazen her. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

She was across the room like a whiplash; her hand shot out faster than a cobra strike and gripped my wrist. She put her face close to mine and I got it then, a powerful blast of dead lilies. ‘Don’t play the clever one with me, young lady. Don’t you dare!’

She released me, and the hand that had held me went up to her head, tidying her hair, as though she regretted her action. I gulped. ‘I – I’m sorry.’ It was out before I could help it and I wished immediately I could call the words back. I would not kowtow to her. But as things turned out it was the right thing to say, for she seemed to soften, not with liking, but because I had done that which I hadn’t wished to, namely acknowledged her as the one who held the upper hand.

She swivelled and sphinxed Giles. ‘And you, I suppose you’ve never been here either?’

Giles squirmed. ‘Well, I – that is, Miss Wh—, I mean, Miss Taylor, I –’ He looked to me for rescue.

I went and stood beside him and slipped an arm around his waist.

Miss Taylor’s face suddenly relaxed, and she smiled, not unkindly. ‘They tell me you cannot read.’

I defied her a look back.

‘Well, you and I both know that is nonsense, don’t we?’ Seeing me bewildering an answer, she went on, ‘I know your
uncle has forbidden it, but that shows how ridiculously out of touch the man is. You might as well order the sun not to shine, or the tide not to come in.’

‘Like King Canute!’ exclaimed Giles, attempting to please her.

She condescended him a smile. ‘Yes, like King Canute.’ She turned and paced about the room a little, this way and that. Giles and I rooted to the spot. Finally she came back to where she’d started, standing before us. She addressed herself to me. ‘Now, listen carefully. This is what I propose. I cannot openly go against your uncle’s restrictions, ludicrous though they may be. But I see no sense in you sneaking about the place after books as you have been doing these many years, I’ve no doubt. Nor do I intend to waste my time trying to stop you. I suggest that when I bring Giles here with me to study, you accompany us with some piece of embroidery on which you are engaged. I suggest something quite large, bigger, say, than the average open book.’

I struggled to straight-face. I could not believe this. ‘If we are interrupted by one of the servants, you need simply to make sure the embroidery conceals anything – any object, you understand, I do not name what that object may be – that happens to be in your lap. You may also –’ she paused, ‘suggest books that you think Giles might like to look at later in the schoolroom and I will take them there. Perhaps I should point out that neither Mrs Grouse nor the servants are able to distinguish which books are appropriate for a boy of Giles’s age and which are beyond him. So they won’t question the presence of any book there. Well, what do you say?’

‘Yes, miss, thank you, miss.’

She turned toward the window and stared out at the sunlit
lawns, as if lost in thought. I meantime gazed around the room. I had never before seen the books all at once and in all their glory. It near fainted me with overwhelming.

Miss Taylor turned abruptly. ‘There is just one thing.’ She looked at Giles. ‘You, I know, have kept your stepsister’s secret for many years and kept it well. You must continue to do so, for there will be difficulty for us all if you do not. And you, young lady, will have to learn not to be so interested in the affairs of others. You will not inquire about them, nor will you spy upon them by day
or by night
, or else I may begin to look what lies beneath your needlework. Is that clear.’

‘Yes, miss. Quite clear, miss.’

So there we were that afternoon, in the schoolroom, I at one end and Miss Taylor the other with Giles, teaching him his French verbs, all of which I, of course, already knew, although I silented in both that tongue and my native English, not wishing to do anything that might spoil a good thing. Opened on my lap I had the first volume of Wilkie Collins’s
The Woman in White
. On the little occasional table at my elbow rested my embroidery, a cushion cover which I trusted would be like Penelope’s, that is, never finished but always there to help me in my quest to read every book in the library. How easily does the mind selfish! How readily do we put aside the prospect of future disaster for present pleasure! I ostriched for the sake of books. I put my little brother’s life at risk for my own guilty enjoyment, I do freely admit it now.

I halfwayed through the book’s second chapter when there was a knock at the door. I slammed the book shut and hastened the embroidery frame over it just as the door opened and Mrs Grouse walked in. She caught sight of me first and a smile
lit up her face like a match a bonfire. ‘Why, Miss Florence, what a pleasure it is to see you so busily engaged upon your needlework. This is just what your uncle would want.’ She then evidently recalled what she had come for and the smile faded as she turned her attention to Miss Taylor, as though she recanted the compliment she had paid me because it complimented even more the teacher who had achieved the change. ‘Begging your pardon, Miss Taylor’ – she said this with a hint of mockery so understated and subtle that you could not openly have found offence in it without embarrassing yourself – ‘but we have visitors.’

Miss Taylor looked up, her face somewhat troubled. I took it at the time that she was annoyed at being disturbed in the middle of her work, but later realised that might not be the reason. ‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, Mrs Van Hoosier and young master Theo. Come to pay their respects before they shut up the house and return to New York.’

Our new governess seemed discomforted for a moment. She fumbled the book she was holding and it fell to the floor and she bent hastily and picked it up. By this time she was almost her usual brusque self. ‘Well, now, children, we must not keep our visitors waiting, we must go and bid them farewell – or in my case hello and farewell – right away.’ She stood waiting for us and Giles gratefulled his book closed and stood up too. I waited a moment until Mrs Grouse’s back was turned so that I could slip
The Woman in White
from my lap and onto the side table, and then made to follow the housekeeper. Miss Taylor ushered us out the door after Mrs Grouse, and we had just stepped through it when there was a groan from behind us. We all three at once turned to see Miss Taylor leaning against the door jamb, one hand
raised to her forehead as though in some kind of faint. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Oh, dear!’

Mrs Grouse instanted and caught her. She turned to us and hissed, ‘Go on, children. Run along to the drawing room and see Theo and his mama, while I attend to Miss Taylor.’

We did as we were told, glancing back to see Mrs Grouse supporting the governess with one arm around her waist and corridoring her in the direction of Miss Taylor’s room. Giles and I looked at one another and shrugged, but then, excited at the prospect of seeing Theo, even if only for the maudlin business of saying goodbye for who knew how many weeks, at least until his next asthma attack, we made our way downstairs.

At first it was hard to see Theo, for Mrs Van Hoosier took up most of the drawing room. We sidled into it and good-afternoon-ma’amed her. Giles, who hadn’t met her before, couldn’t avert his eyes from her bosom but stared at it as you might a famous landmark, like one of the pyramids, maybe, or perhaps more aptly in this case, a pair of them.

Mrs Van Hoosier put her spectacles, which she wore on a cord around her neck, up to her eyes and inspected my brother. ‘What’s the matter with you, boy?’ she inquired. ‘Never seen a lady before?’

‘Please, ma’am,’ burst out Giles, now completely overwhelmed by a combination of bust and bombast, ‘please, ma’am, would you prefer to be pegged down on the ground naked and covered with honey and left to killer ants to sting to death, slowly of course, or put in a barrel and sent over Niagara Falls and smashed to pieces quickly on the rocks below? Which do you think?’

Mrs Van Hoosier shifted her head back near enough a foot to signal her surprise at this manner of greeting but
then broke into a smile. She turned to me. ‘Why, isn’t that just like a boy, to be preoccupied with things like that? I well remember when Theo was that age’ – at this she swivelled her head this way and that – ‘Theo, where are you, boy?’

Theo emerged from behind her, smiling his eyes. ‘Hello, Florence,’ he said. ‘Hello, Giles.’

Mrs Van Hoosier sank into an armchair. ‘I explained to that housekeeper person that we can’t stay long. We have to be on the six-fifteen to New York. We’ve just come to say goodbye and to take a look at your new governess.’

‘I – I don’t think that will be possible, ma’am,’ I said. ‘She was on the way here with us when she suddenly felt ill. Mrs Grouse is tending to her.’

‘How unfortunate that she should pick just this moment to be ill. Nothing catching, I hope?’ She waved a dismissive hand at us. ‘Anyhow, if you young people want to go outside for a bit I have no objection, but half an hour, Theo, no longer, and no running about; I don’t want you to bring on another asthma attack just as we’re going away. Oh, and Florence, be so kind as to have them send me some tea. I will have to take it alone if the wretched woman is unwell.’

Outside, Giles begged us to hide-and-seek and he ran off and hid, but Theo and I half-hearted the game. We went and sat on the stone wall behind the house so we could talk, although every five minutes or so Theo had to get up and find Giles just to keep him interested in the game and out of our hair.

‘So, Theo,’ I said, soon as we sat down the first time, ‘you’ll be going back to school.’

He looked down at his hands, those long bony fingers that seemed to have no flesh on them. He beetrooted. ‘That’s just
what I came to tell you,’ he said. He raised his head and pained me a look. ‘I should have told you before. I’ve been putting it off because I couldn’t bear to. I’m not returning to school, leastways not yet awhile. We’re going away.’

My heart hopelessed a bird-in-a-cage flutter. ‘Away? What do you mean, away?’

He was still interested in his hands, which were interlocking and freeing themselves as though he had no control over them, like two strange beasts wrestling. ‘We’re all going to Europe, to make a tour of the place, mother, father and I. We sail on Friday week.’

‘Europe,’ I faltered. ‘For how long?’

He looked up at me plaintively. ‘Six months.’

I made no reply. Just then Giles called out so I said, ‘You better go seek him. He’s behind the rhododendron.’

‘I know it!’ said Theo and gangled away.

I tried to take in what he’d just told me. The news could not have come at a worse time. For what other ally but Theo did I have against Miss Taylor? Who else would there be to help me protect my little brother when she tried to steal him away, or worse, if such her intention was? Who else but Theo could I turn to in time of need?