by John Harding
If I were right (and what other motives could Miss Taylor have had for avoiding the Van Hoosiers?), then something else must also be true. That what Miss Taylor was planning was expected to be executed before the Van Hoosiers returned, or she would not have been so pleased by the news of their temporary absence. Whatever it was, it was going to happen in less than six months, it was going to happen soon.
Only one thing did not make sense to me. If her object was to harm Giles, then why not do it now? Unless, of course, she wanted to fake some accident to him so that she was not held responsible and was waiting only until she precised the means. If that were so then it might be at any time. Chance might sudden it and she advantage the opportunity on the spur of the moment. I would have to watch her like a hawk.
But if she meant simply to take Giles, and her seeming fondness for him seemed to suggest this, then why not simply act now? What on earth was she waiting for? At first this bothered me because it did not make sense, until I began to think about what might happen after she had taken him. Suppose it was for a ransom, then she would have to steal him away and keep him hidden and perhaps for some considerable time before the ransom was paid. To even take Giles away she would need his cooperation and before she could guarantee that she would have to gain his confidence, something not to be done in a minute. And if it were not for a ransom, if she intended to keep Giles for ever, then she would need first to gain a secure place in his affection.
That was it! That was surely it! She was merely waiting until Giles was sufficiently attached to her to swallow some story she would tell him about why he must steal away with her, and subsequently remain with her, and then she would be gone. It so obvioused I kicked myself that I hadn’t seen it before. And she had libraried me to keep me out of her hair while she practised her wiles on Giles, every day inching him further and further away from me. Why, already he had forgotten the incident at breakfast, her sudden terrifying outburst of anger, and fawned about her as though she were the most wonderful person who ever lived. I resolved to speak to Giles about it, to warn him of the danger he was running.
Next day, though, it far from easied to find a time when I could alone him. Miss Taylor fetched him from his room first thing and took him down to breakfast with her and from then on they togethered almost always. It was only now when I sought to speak to him that I realised how much she had already sequestered him from me, how rarely the two of us ever aloned together any more. Eventually we were let out to play in the gardens as a relief from lessons for Giles, and to fresh-air us both. Even then, Miss Taylor accompanied us outside and seated herself on a recliner on the terrace, from which she watchful-eyed us. At one point, when I moved close to Giles and began to whisper that I needed to talk to him urgently, I looked up to see her already outseated and heading toward us. I instanted away from him and shouted out, ‘Can’t catch me, can’t catch me!’ and took off into the shrubbery, Giles tumbling after me.
As you will remember, the shrubbery was neglected and overgrown. I sped through it, following a path that Giles and I knew well but a newcomer would have difficulty in discerning, my brother at my heels. Somewhere I could hear Miss Taylor threshing around in the uncontrolled jungle, blundering after us. I hid myself in a rhododendron bush and listened for Giles’s footsteps. As he passed by, I reached out an arm, grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the bush, my other hand clamping his mouth before he had a chance to cry out. I silent-fingered him to keep quiet and we lay like that, hardly breathing, until we heard Miss Taylor go crashing past. When I was quite sure she was gone, I whispered to him, ‘Giles, I have to talk to you.’
He squirmed under my grip. ‘I don’t want to talk. We can talk any time. This isn’t the time for talking, it’s the time for play.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I hissed. ‘We don’t ever have time to talk like we used to. We’re never alone any more. I can’t talk to you without Miss Taylor hearing everything. Have you not noticed?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose. But then, what does it matter if she hears? Why should we care?’
‘Because I am sure she is not who she pretends to be. I think she has come here for some evil purpose of her own. I am half convinced she isn’t human, that she is some kind of being from the spirit world, some sort of ghost.’
Giles excited at this, although I could see he was more than a little afraid, too. ‘A ghost? But why should she come here if she has no connection to Blithe? Whose ghost could she be?’
I bit my lip. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t figured that bit out yet.’
He thought too, a process that never lasted very long with Giles, wrinkling his brow. After perhaps half a minute his face suddened alight. ‘I know! It’s obvious, Flo, truly it is. She must be the ghost of Miss Whitaker, come back to the place where she met her untimely death…’
‘Oh Giles,’ I despaired, ‘don’t be silly. She’s nothing like Miss Whitaker. They don’t even have the same kind of hair.’
‘You can’t know that, Flo. Who says ghosts keep the same appearance as they had when they were alive? Maybe they disguise themselves to fool the people who are still living.’
Giles was building this up into a great game, a big pretend that he no more believed than I did, which was not at all serving my purpose. ‘Giles, you have to listen to me. You have to take care. You must not let her steal her way into your affections. She wants to gain your trust so that she can trick you into going away with her.’
Giles stared at me, amazed. Then he chuckled. ‘But why should she do that, Flo?’ He looked at me as though at a stranger. ‘Flo, you do say the oddest things.’ His brow wrinkled again. ‘Anyway, if she is Miss Whitaker, why should she want to harm me, or you, come to that? Perhaps she just wants to haunt the last place she knew when she was alive. Perhaps she liked being our governess and wanted to do it again. Perhaps –’
At that moment there was a rustling nearby and before I could say another word to my brother, the leaves of the rhododendron parted, revealing in the gap Miss Taylor’s face. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, falsing a smile, ‘my two lost chickens. Come now, children, you’ve had long enough for play. It’s time to get back to our books.’
15
The following day we took a picnic down to the lake. Again Miss Taylor walked around it until she came to the spot on the shore nearest the place where Miss Whitaker had tragicked. On the way she hadn’t spoken, but pulled ahead of us; it seemed she couldn’t wait to get there, as if tugged by some invisible force. We spread out our food and Giles and I ate heartily, our appetites stimulated by the fresh air, but Miss Taylor so picked at her food that it made me watch her in a way I never had before at a meal and notice that she made no attempt to eat anything. The day was hot and after we had finished, Giles, who had brought his fishing pole, settled himself down on the bank to fish. Miss Taylor outed a book from her reticule and began to read.
I suddenly felt exhausted. The intensity of the sun, the oppressiveness of the air, its closeness presaging a thunderstorm, difficulted it to breathe. I tireded and headached; my limbs heavied and I lay back on the picnic rug and, no matter how I tried to fight it, could not prevent my eyelids from drooping and then shutting. I thought that if I closed them for only one minute, that’s all, a single paltry minute, I should recover my senses.
I know not how long I slept. At some point I heard the drone of a bee, the whine of mosquitoes, the gentle disturbance of the lake’s surface as a fish stirred, and then such a silence, such a stillness in the air, that something icy fingered my spine and tickled my neck. I instanted something was wrong and bolt-uprighted and eye-opened all in one movement.
I frighted naturally for Giles; he was my first thought, but there he was, down by the shore, sitting over his pole just as he had been before I slept, so that I did not know whether I had unconscioused for a mere minute or for an hour or even longer; there was no way of telling. I looked around for Miss Taylor but could see no sign of her. Her boo
k lay open and face down upon the picnic rug, but she was nowhere to be found. Then something in that stillness, something in the icy tiptoe up and down my spine, said to me to look at the lake, not down at the shore where Giles sat, but at the lake itself, across to the middle, at the spot I never wanted to look at, the place where Miss Whitaker had misfortuned, and there I saw her, Miss Taylor, out upon the water, the most amazing sight, so that I thought I dreamed or hallucinated, except that it was all so real. She was on the surface of the water, but without any boat. She was standing there, in the very centre of the lake, the water lapping about her shoes, although, as I had good reason to know, there was nothing there to stand upon, no submerged jetty, no little island or sand bar. She was gazing down at the water with a melancholy expression, or rather something of that in her posture, for I could not discern her features from so great a distance, and then, sensing my eyes upon her, she looked up and stared right at me and, it felt, through me, so that I imagined her eyes glazed over, blank like those of a sculpted figure, and I couldn’t tell whether or no she saw me at all. Suddenly she began to walk across the water, sending up little splashes every time her feet struck its surface, striding fast and purposefully toward me, so that I had but one thought, namely to run, to run away from this terrible vision.
‘Giles!’ I called, for always I feared me most for my little brother. ‘Giles! Look up!’ I rose from the ground and began to downhill to him. He showed no sign of having heard me nor of having seen the…the thing upon the water. ‘Giles!’ I essayed again. I was nearly upon him now and the figure on the water was driving for us still.
This time he heard me. He looked up at me, bemused. ‘What, Flo? What’s the matter? You shouldn’t go shouting like that, you’ll scare the fish.’
‘Look out upon the lake,’ I gasped, reaching him and putting my arm about his shoulders, to steer his gaze. ‘Look!’
He looked instead at me, eyes alarmed, evidently frightened by my agitation, but after a moment did as I injuncted and looked out across the water. I watched his face, awaiting his reaction. He screwed up his eyes, puzzled, then turned to me.
‘What? What am I meant to be looking at, Flo?’
I shook him somewhat. ‘Do you not see? Do you not see her?’
‘Who, Flo? Who?’
‘Why, Miss Taylor, of course, walking across the lake!’
He stared me hard. ‘Don’t be silly, Flo, how could she do that?’
I shook him roughly. ‘You must see! You must!’ I turned him to face the lake once more. ‘Tell me you do not see the witch, striding over the water!’
Giles rubbed his eyes with one hand. ‘I – I think I do. I – I, yes, Flo, I see her! I really can, you know.’
I followed his gaze across the water. There was no one there. She was gone.
I released my grip upon him. It obvioused he was lying to appease me and had seen nothing at all untoward. He looked up at me, muting an appeal. ‘I think I saw her, Flo.’
I stared at him a moment, then looked once more at the lake, which nothinged still. I looked upon the empty water, watching the breeze wrinkle its surface, wondering me if it had happened at all. There was a rustle behind me, the sound of leaves in the wind, and, even before she spoke, I knew she was there.
‘Well, children,’ she said, ‘I think that is enough relaxation for one day, don’t you? We must be getting back to our work.’ I turned and looked her in the eye. It was the snake’s eye that gazed back at me, sure of itself, and I certained she knew I had seen her out on the lake, and what was worse, much worse, that she didn’t in the least bit care.
16
At supper that evening I resolved to observe Miss Taylor. I had thought of telling Mrs Grouse about the incident at the lake but in the end decided not to, for I knew I would not be believed. ‘It’s just one of your imaginings, my dear,’ she would say. For was I not this strange child who nightwalked and before the days of governesses spent hours (as she thought, she didn’t know, of course, about my librarying or towering) wandering the house and grounds alone, daydreaming? Moreover, if I told her and she disbelieved, she would doubtless mention the matter to Miss Taylor and all would be out in the open; our new governess would know that I had appealed for help – and failed – and that I was her enemy, if indeed she unsuspected that already. Instead I would own-counsel, speak only when spoken to during the meal, and so allow her free rein to talk and laugh with Giles while I kept watch upon her without obviousing to do so.
The meal confirmed what I had first awared of during our picnic. Miss Taylor cut up her meat, laid down her knife, took her fork in her right hand, speared a piece of meat, raised it to her lips, but then thought of some new thing to say to my brother and laid down the fork again. This happened time and again. At one point she complained that Giles had not eaten enough greens. There were none left in the serving bowl, so she took his fork from him, speared several pieces of broccoli on her own plate and transferred them to his. It was all neatly done, sleight-of-handed slick as a magician, and, were I not watching carefully, I would never have known. But I saw how clever she had been. The meat having been cut up and dispersed around her plate, it in no way seemed to amount to the single chop with which she had begun; some of the broccoli that had been on her plate having been switched to Giles’s, there was no way of telling how much she herself had actually eaten. Except that I knew. I who had been hawking her all the while, I saw that not a morsel of food had passed her lips; in short, she had eaten nothing at all. And when I thought about it I was sure that, other than that mad moment when she seized the waffle from Giles and pecked at it like some demented bird of prey, I had never seen her consume a single thing.
When the meal was over I unobserved into the kitchen, where I found Meg emptying the plates into the bin John kept for the pigs. I hung around a little until she finally agreed to notice me and paused in her task. ‘Well, missy, and what might you be wanting in here?’
‘I don’t want anything.’
She eyebrowed me. ‘Oh, come now, missy, I know your ways, which are the ways of all children especially them that’s growing fast. You came in here hoping for some titbit, now didn’t you?’
I so morselled out a smile as to look like I was trying to hold it back and nodded. I figured that letting her think this was my motive would stop her fathoming the real one.
She looked toward the door to make sure neither Miss Taylor nor Mrs Grouse was around, then opened one of the cupboards, took down a tin, extracted a cookie and handed it to me. She went to recupboard the tin, but as she reached it up, second-thoughted, redelidded it, took out another cookie, which she betweened her teeth to freehand herself to put lid back on tin and tin back in cupboard, then took the cookie in her hand and began to nibble it. Meg is not what you would call a slim-figured person.
‘My, what a lot of food gets wasted,’ I said, as she resumed her task of scraping the plates into the bin and instantly regretted that I too had joined the Giles school of theatricals, but Meg was intent on her task and seemed not to notice.
‘Why yes,’ she said, ‘and it gets worse all the time.’ She looked up at me. ‘You really should eat your supper at your age, Miss Florence, then you’d have no need to come in here begging for cookies.’
‘But I ate all my supper,’ I said. ‘And Giles ate lots. Haven’t you noticed the leftovers have increased since Miss Taylor came?’
Meg thought about this. ‘Well, now you mention it, miss, perhaps I have.’ She pondered a moment, then shrugged and scraped the last plate noisily into the bin, the knife rasping against the china, so setting my teeth on edge that it was all I could do not to cover my ears with my hands. ‘Well, the lady must be eating like a bird then, Miss Florence, for if it’s as you say and that plate was hers, then she has left the whole of her pork chop, no matter it’s in pieces. She evidently gets her fun out of cutting rather than eating.’
I shivered at this. Ah, my dear, I could eat you! sprang into my mind, the
memory of her greeding over Giles in the night, as if she could scarce resist the temptation to sink her teeth into his tender flesh.
‘Still,’ said Meg, ‘some of these highfalutin’ ladies, the sort of folk who give themselves airs and graces, are like that. Obsessed with their figures. I count myself fortunate that I’m not one of them. I have better things to do than go around all day worrying about my waist.’
As if to confirm this, having finished clearing the plates, she went back to the cupboard, took out the cookie tin again and we both had another go at it.
17
What was I to do now? Here I was, a twelve-year-old girl, orphaned, all alone in the world save for a few fond but stupid servants and, of course, my little brother who, far from being able to aid me, rather required of me protection for himself. I thought to write my uncle but then thought more and realised I could hope for no succour from that quarter. For one thing, I was not supposed to be able to write at all and from what I knew of him a letter from me was likely to bring not assistance but some form of retribution for having so disobeyed him as to literate myself. That aside, he hated having any interference upon his time from us at Blithe and indeed had kicked up a mighty stink in his letters at the time of the Miss Whitaker incident, especially at the publicity of the inquest, when he found his business matters suddenly so pressing that he could not even spare the time to attend the proceedings.
It never but amazes me how clever is the human mind, or my own mind, at least. For here I had no sooner begun hopelessing my position and dismissing any idea of help from one quarter, my uncle, than my mind, continuing to work on its own, without any aid from me, leapt from that to the inquest and then to something else that possibly solutioned the whole thing. Captain Hadleigh. Here was someone who was intelligent and well educated but with nothing of that air of superiority grown-ups habituate toward children, a man who was prepared to listen to what you might want to tell him.
