Читать книгу The Flask - Nicky Singer - Страница 11

As soon as Zoe leaves (flamboyant twirl and a shout of Bye-eee as she flies down the stairs), I take my chair and sit at the desk.

I never saw Aunt Edie at this desk, as I saw her so often at the piano. But she must have sat here, I realise. Sat writing letters, private things, not things you do when you have guests in the house. I pull out the runners (and Si is right about this, it isn’t difficult at all) and lay down the lid.

Inside it is like a little castle. In the middle, there is a small arched doorway, the door itself hinged between two tiny carved wooden pillars. On either side of the door are stepped shelves and cubbyholes of different sizes, to store envelopes or paper, I suppose. There are also four drawers, two wide shallow ones next to the pillars, and at either edge of the desk two narrower, longer ones. The desktop itself slides away if you pull a little leather tab. Underneath is a cavernous little underdrawer.

“That’s where they would have kept the inkwells,” says Si in passing.

I can see dark stains which could have been ink. People writing at this desk long before Aunt Edie. I imagine a quill pen scratching out a love letter. And suddenly those faraway people who sat at this desk, family or strangers, they don’t seem so faraway at all. They seem joined to me by the desk and all the things that have been written and thought here. And then I think about Edie herself, and how maybe she loved this desk. Sun-bright Edie, maybe coming here to be quiet, to be still, to unfurl her own dark heart.

Then I know I want to claim this desk after all.