The Chimney Sweeper's Boy
Read The Chimney Sweeper's Boy Online
Authors: Barbara Vine
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A Dark-Adapted Eye
A Fatal Inversion
The House of Stairs
Gallowglass
King Solomon's Carpet
Anna's Book
No Night Is Too Long
The Brimstone Wedding
Copyright © 1998 by Kingsmarkham Enterprises, Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Harmony Books, a division of Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group. Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland
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HARMONY and colophon are trademarks of Crown Publishers, Inc.
Originally published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd. in 1998.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vine, Barbara
   The chimney sweeper's boy: a novel / Barbara Vine.â1st American ed.
   I. Title.
PR6068.E63C47Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 1998b
823â².914âdc21Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 98-10567
eISBN: 978-0-307-80115-9
v3.1
To Patrick Maher
He wanted a family of his own. He was very young when he understood this, fifteen or sixteen. Because he was accustomed, even then, to examining his thoughts and searching his soul, he corrected himself, deciding that what he wanted was a family to add to his existing one. Children of his own. He imagined giving his brothers and sisters children to love and giving his children uncles and aunts. His dream encompassed them all living together somewhere, in a big house, the kind they had never known. He was old enough to know how unlikely this was.
A little later on, he understood that it is not acceptable for men to feel like this. Few men do. Women want children and men agree. Or if men want children, it is to carry on a name or inherit a business. He wanted them because he loved being one of many and wanted to add to that number. Friends were not very important in their lives. Why have friends when you have family?
Many things he felt and thought were not acceptable among men. Not right for a man. For instance, if he were to found that family, a woman would be a prerequisite. He knew the pattern, how it should be. He must meet a girl and fall in love, court her, become engaged to her, marry her. It seemed insurmountably difficult. He liked girls, but not in that way. Without knowing much, he knew what he meant by “that way,” kissing, touching, all the things they talked about endlessly, monotonously, at school. Those others longed to do such things to girls, and some said they had, but he clearly understood that for him to do it, even to get to the point of doing it, would be an endurance test, a labor comparable to taking an exam in French, his worst subject, or taking part in a hated cross-country run.
How did he also know that it would not be the real thing?
âGerald Candless, L
ESS
I
S
M
ORE
It is an error to say the eyes have expression. Eyebrows and eyelids, lips, the planes of the face, all these are indicators of emotion. The eyes are merely colored liquid in a glass.
âA M
ESSENGER OF THE
G
ODS
“N
OT A WORD TO MY GIRLS
,”
HE HAD SAID ON THE WAY
home from the hospital.
My
girls, as if they weren't also hers. She was used to it, he always said that, and in a way they were more his. “I'm not hearing this,” she said.
“You're going to have major surgery and your grown-up children aren't to be told.”
“Â âMajor surgery,'Â ” he said. “You sound like Staff Nurse Samantha in a hospital sitcom. I won't have Sarah and Hope worried. I won't give them a day of hell while they await the result.”
You flatter yourself, she thought, but that was just spite. He didn't. They would have a day of hell; they would have anguish, while she had a little mild trepidation.
He made her promise. It wasn't difficult. She wouldn't have cared for the task of telling them.
The girls came down as usual. In the summer they came down every weekend, and in the winter, too, unless the roads were impassable. They had forgotten the Romneys were coming to lunch, and Hope made a face, what her father called “a square mouth,” a snarl, pushing her head forward and curling back her lips.
“Be thankful it's only lunch,” said Gerald. “When I first met the guy, I asked him for the weekend.”
“He
refused
?” Sarah said it as if she were talking of someone turning down a free round-the-world cruise.
“No, he didn't refuse. I wrote to him, asked him for lunch, and said he could stay at the hotel.”
Everyone laughed except Ursula.
“He's got a wife he's bringing.”
“Oh God, Daddy, is there more? He hasn't got kids, has he?”
“If he has, they're not invited.” Gerald smiled sweetly at his daughters. He said thoughtfully, “We might play the Game.”
“With
them
? Oh, do let's,” said Hope. “We haven't played the Game for ages.”
Titus and Julia Romney were much honored by an invitation from Gerald Candless, and if they had expected to be put up in the house and not have to pay for a room at the Dunes, they hadn't said so, not even to each other. Julia had anticipated eccentricity from someone so distinguished, even rudeness, and she was pleasantly surprised to encounter a genial host, a gracious, if rather silent, hostess, and two good-looking young women who turned out to be the daughters.
Titus, who had his naive side, as she well knew, was hoping for a look at the room where the work was done. And perhaps a present. Not a first edition, that would be expecting too much, but any book signed by the author. Conversation on literary matters, how he wrote, when he wrote, and even, now the daughters had appeared, what it was like to be
his
child.
It was a hot, sunny day in July, a few days before the start of the high season at the hotel, or they wouldn't have gotten a room. Lunch was in a darkish, cool dining room with no view of the sea. Far from discussing books, the Candlesses talked about the weather, summer visitors, the beach, and Miss Batty, who was coming to clear the table and wash up. Gerald said Miss Batty wasn't much of a cleaner but that they kept her because her name made him laugh. There was another Miss Batty and a Mrs. Batty, and they all lived together in a cottage in Croyde. “Sounds like a new card game, Unhappy Families,” he said, and then he laughed and the daughters laughed.
In the drawing roomâso he called itâthe French windows were open onto the garden, the pink and blue hydrangea, the cliff edge, the long bow-shaped
beach and the sea. Julia asked what the island was and Sarah said Lundy, but she said it in such a way as to imply only a total ignoramus would ask. Coffee was brought by someone who must have been Miss Batty and drinks were poured by Hope. Gerald and Titus drank port, Julia had a refill of the Meursault, and Sarah and Hope both had brandy. Sarah's brandy was neat, but Hope's had ice in it.
Then Gerald made the sort of announcement Julia hated, really hated. She didn't think people actually did this anymore, not in this day and age, not grown-ups. Not intellectuals.
“And now we'll play the Game,” Gerald had said. “Let's see how clever you are.”
“Would it be wonderful to find someone who caught on at once, Daddy?” said Hope. “Or would we hate it?”
“We'd hate it,” said Sarah, and she planted on Gerald's cheek one of those kisses that the Romneys found mildly embarrassing to witness.
He caught at her hand briefly. “It never happens, though, does it?”
Julia met Ursula's eye and must have put inquiry into her glance. Or simple fear.
“Oh, I shan't play,” Ursula said. “I shall go out for my walk.”
“In this heat?”
“I like it. I always walk along the beach in the afternoons.”
Titus, who also disliked parlor games, asked what this one was called. “Not this Unhappy Families you were talking about?”
“It's called I Pass the Scissors,” said Sarah.
“What do we have to do?”
“You have to do it right. That's all.”
“You mean we all have to do something and there's a right way and a wrong way of doing it?”
She nodded.
“How will we know?”
“We'll tell you.”
The scissors were produced by Hope from a drawer in the tallboy. Once kitchen scissors had been used for the Game, or Ursula's sewing scissors or nail scissors, whatever came to hand. But the Game and the ascendancy it gave them afforded so much pleasure that, while his daughters still lived at
home, Gerald had bought a pair of Victorian scissors with handles like a silver bird in flight and sharp pointed blades. It was these that Hope now handed to her father for him to begin.
Leaning forward in his armchair, his feet planted far apart, his back to the light, Gerald opened the scissors so that they formed a cross. He smiled. He was a big man, with a head journalists called “leonine,” though the lion was old now, with a grizzled, curly mane the color of iron filings. His hands were big and his fingers very long. He handed the scissors to Julia Romney and said, “I pass the scissors uncrossed.”
Julia passed the scissors to Hope as she had received them. “I pass the scissors uncrossed.”
“No, you don't.” Hope closed the scissors, turned them over, and put them into the outstretched fingers of Titus Romney. “I pass the scissors crossed.”