Читать книгу Florence and Giles - John Harding - Страница 9

Giles was sent away to school last fall when he was eight, which, although young, was in keeping with other boys of his class who lived in remote places such as Blithe, where there was no suitable local school. We horse-and-trapped him to the station, John and Mrs Grouse and I, to put him on the train to New York, where he was to be met by teachers from the school. We cried him there; at least Mrs Grouse and I did, while John losing-battled with a quivering lower lip. Giles himself was happy and laughing. He could not remember ever having been on a train and, in his simple, childlike way, futured no further than that. Once on board, he sat in his seat, windowing us with smiles and waves, and I bit my lip and did my best to smile him back, but it was a hard act and I was glad when at last the train began to move and he vanished in a cloud of steam.

I berefted my way home. All our lives, Giles and I had never been apart; it was as though I had lost a limb. How would he fare unprotected by me, who understood his shortcomings so well and loved him for them? Although I had no experience of boys apart from Giles and the silly Van Hoosier boy, I knew from my reading how they cruelled one another, especially at boarding schools. The idea of my little Giles being Flashmanned weeped me all over again when I had just gotten myself back under control. When we neared Blithe House and the trap turned off the road into the long drive, avenued by its mighty oaks rooked with nests, it heavied my heart; I did not know how my new, amputated life was to be borne.

Most girls my age and situation in life would long have been governessed, but I understood this was not for me. By careful quizzery of Mrs Grouse, and a hint or two dropped by John, and general eavesdroppery of servantile gossip, I piecemealed the reason why. My uncle, who had been handsome as a young man, as you could see in the picture in oils of him that hung at the turn of the main staircase, had at one time been married, or if not actually wed, then engaged to, or at least deeply in love with, a young woman, a state of affairs that lasted a number of years. The young lady was dazzlingly beautiful but not his equal in refinement and education, although at first that seemed not to matter. All futured well until she took it into her head (or rather had it put there by my uncle) that she beneathed him in intellectual and cultural things; their life together would be enriched, it was decided, if they could share not just love, but matters of the mind. The young lady duly enrolled in a number of courses at a college in New York City.

Well, you can guess what happened. She wasn’t there long before she got herself booked, and musicked and poetried and theatred and philosophied and all ideaed up, and pretty soon she offrailed, and most probably started drinking and smoking and doing all sorts of other dark deeds, and the upshot of it was that she ended up considering she’d overtaken my uncle and intellectually down-nosing him, and of course then it was inevitable but that she someone-elsed. At least, I think that’s what happened, although I misremember now how much of the above I eavesdropped and how much my mind just made up, as it is wont to do.

And so my uncle took against the education of women. He pretty much decultured himself too, far as I can tell. He shut up Blithe House and left the library to moulder and moved to New York, where I could not imagine he could have had so many books. I had no idea how he passed his time without books, for I had never met him, but I somehow pictured him big-armchaired, brandied and cigared, blank eyes staring out of his once handsome, but now tragically ruined, face into space and thinking about how education had done for his girl and blighted his life.

So I lonelied my way round the big house, opening doors and disturbing the dust in unslept bedrooms. Sometimes I would stretch myself out on a bed and imagine myself the person who had once slumbered there. Thus I peopled the house with their ghosts, phantomed a whole family, and, when I heard unidentified sounds in the attic above me, would not countenance the idea of mice, but saw a small girl, such as I must once have been, whom I imagined in a white frock with a pale face to match, balleting herself lightly across the bare boards.

The thought of this little girl, whom I began to believe might be real, for Blithe was a house abandoned by people and ripe for ghosts, would always eventually recall me to the games I had played with Giles. To unweep me, I would practical myself and search for new places to hide for when he should return at the end of the semester, and when that staled, which it did with increasing frequency, I libraried myself, buried me in that cold heart that more and more had become my real home.

One morning I settled myself down with – I remember it so well – The Mysteries of Udolpho, and after two or three hours, as I thought, I’d near ended it when I awared a sound outside the window, a man’s voice calling. Now, this was an unusual occurrence at Blithe, any human voice outdoors, for there was only John who worked outside and he had not, as I have, the habit of talking with himself, and everywhere was especially quiet now with Giles gone and our sometimes noisy games interrupted, so that I ought to have been surprised and to have immediately investigated, but so absorbed was I in my gothic tale, that the noise failed to curious me, but rather irritated me instead. Eventually the voice began to distant, until it died altogether or was blown away by the autumn wind that was gathering strength outside. I had relished a few more pages when I heard footsteps, more than one person’s, growing louder, coming toward me, and more shouting, but this time inside, followed by a flurry of feet in the passage outside, and the voice of Mary, the maid, calling, ‘Miss Florence! Miss Florence!’ And then the door of the library was flung open followed by Mary again calling my name.

I froze. As luck would have it I was ensconced in a large wingbacked chair, its back to the door, invisibling me from any who stood there, providing, of course, they no-furthered into the room. My heart bounced in my chest. If I were discovered it would be my life’s end. No more books.

Then Meg’s voice, ‘She’s not here, you silly ninny. What would she be doing in here? The girl can’t read. She’s never been let to.’

I muttered a prayer that they wouldn’t notice the many books whose spines I had fingerprinted, my footsteps on the dusty floor.

‘Well, that’s as maybe,’ replied Mary, ‘but she’s got to be somewhere.’

The sound of the door closing.

The sound of Florence exhaling. I closed the book carefully and made sure to put it back in its place upon the shelf. I crept to the door, put my ear to it and listened. No sound. Quick and quiet as a mouse, I opened the door, outed, closed it behind me, and sped along the passage to put as much distance as possible between me and my sanctum before I was found. As I made my way to the kitchen I wondered what all the to-do was about. Obviously something had happened that required me at once.

I could hear voices in the drawing room as I tiptoed past and went into the kitchen, where I interrupted Meg and young Mary, who were having an animated chat. At the sound of the door they stopped talking and looked up at me in a mixture of surprise and relief.

‘Oh, thank goodness, there you are, Miss Florence,’ said Meg, deflouring her arm with a swishery of kitchen cloth. ‘Have you any idea what the time is, young lady?’ She nodded her head at the big clock that hangs on the wall opposite the stove and my eyes followed hers to gaze at its face. It claimed the hour as five after three.

‘B-but that’s impossible,’ I muttered. ‘The clock must be wrong. It cannot have gotten so late.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the clock, missy,’ snapped Meg. ‘Begging your pardon, miss, it’s you that’s wrong. You’re surely going to catch it from Mrs Grouse, you’ve had the whole household worried sick. Where on earth were you?’

Before I could answer I heard footsteps behind me and turned and face-to-faced with Mrs Grouse.

‘M-Mrs Grouse, I – I’m sorry…’ I stammered, and then stopped. Her face, rosy-cheeked with its Mississippi delta of broken veins and their tributaries, was arranged in a big smile.

‘Never mind that, now, my dear,’ she said kindly. ‘You have a visitor.’

She turned and went into the passage. I rooted to the spot. A visitor! Who could it possibly be? I didn’t know anyone. Except, of course, my uncle! I had never met him and knew little about him except that, according to his portrait, he was very handsome, the which would be endorsed by Miss Whitaker when she arrived.

Mrs Grouse paused in the passageway and turned back to me. ‘Well, come along, miss, you mustn’t keep him waiting.’

Him! So it was my uncle! Now perhaps I could ask him all the things I wanted to ask. About my parents, of whom Mrs Grouse claimed to know nothing, for she and all the servants had come to Blithe only after they had died. About my education. Perhaps when he saw me in the flesh, a real, living young lady rather than a name in a letter, he would relent and allow me a governess, or at least books. Perhaps I could charm him and make him see I wasn’t at all like her, the woman who had been cultured away.

Mrs Grouse stopped at the entrance to the drawing room and waved me ahead of her. I heard a cough from within. It made me want to cough myself. I entered nervously and stopped dead.

‘Theo Van Hoosier! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at school?’

‘Asthma,’ he said, apologetically. Then triumphantly, ‘I have asthma!’

‘I – I don’t understand.’

He walked over to me and smiled. ‘I have asthma. I’ve been sent home from school. My mother has brought me up here to recuperate. She thinks I’ll be better off here in the country, with the clean air.’

Mrs Grouse bustled into the room. ‘Isn’t that just grand, Miss Florence. I knew you’d be pleased.’ She dropped a nod to Theo. ‘Not that you have asthma, of course, Mr Van Hoosier, but that you’ll be able to visit us. Miss Florence has been so miserable since Master Giles went off to school, moping around the house on her own. You’ll be company for one another.’

‘I can call on you every day,’ said Theo. ‘If you’ll permit me, of course.’

‘I – I’m not sure about that,’ I mumbled. ‘I may be…busy.’

‘Busy, Miss Florence,’ said Mrs Grouse. ‘Why, whatever have you to be busy with? You don’t even know how to sew.’

‘So does that mean I may, then?’ said Theo. He puppied me a smile. ‘May I call on you, please?’ He stood holding his hat in his hand, fiddling with the brim. I wanted to spit in his eye but that was out of the question.

I nodded. ‘I guess, but only after luncheon.’

‘That’s dandy!’ he said and immediately got himself into a coughing fit, which went on for some time until he pulled from his jacket pocket a little metal bottle with a rubber bulb attached, like a perfume spray. He pointed the top of the bottle at his face and squeezed the bulb, jetting a fine mist into his open mouth, which seemed to quieten the cough.

I curioused a glance at him and then at the bottle.

‘Tulsi and ma huang,’ he said. ‘It’s an invention of your Dr Bradley here.’

I puzzled him one.

‘The former is extracted from the leaves of the Holy Basil plant, the latter a Chinese herb long used to treat asthma. It is Dr Bradley’s great idea to put them together in liquid form and to spray them into the throat for quick absorption. He is experimenting with it and I am his first subject. It appears to work.’

There followed an awkward silence as Theo slowly absorbed that the subject had not the interest for me that it had for him. Then, in repocketing the bottle, he managed to drop his hat and as he and Mrs Grouse both went to pick it up they banged heads and that started him off coughing and wheezing all over again. Finally, when he had stopped coughing and had his hat to fiddle with once more, he gave me a weak smile and said, ‘May I visit with you now, then? After all, it is after luncheon.’

‘It may be after yours,’ I said, ‘but it ain’t after mine. I haven’t had my luncheon today.’ And I turned and swept from the room with as much poise as I could muster, hoping that in getting rid of Theo, I hadn’t jumped it back into Mrs Grouse’s mind about me going missing earlier on.