by Janet Ellis
‘Oh!’ said Keziah, looking forlornly at this monkish cell. ‘You are a little Spartan.’ I bridled.
People had a habit of describing me as a ‘little something-or-other’. ‘Our little Columbus’, my mother once said, taking me on a rare visit. ‘My little Linnaeus!’ Dr Edwards announced with glee as I pulled a stem apart. I did not feel little at all, indeed parts of me were growing very fast and I could no longer run my hands over my body without encountering new hills. ‘There is not much on display,’ I agreed.
‘Ah! But much is hidden?’ Keziah said. I did not like being teased, it usually made me itch to retaliate, but hers had a light quality. It was as if she opened her arms wide to me, to show nothing was concealed. ‘Where are your dresses?’ She opened the door of my wardrobe as she said this and brushed one hand lightly against the fabric hanging there. She cannot have been expecting to find a great many treats. ‘Do you have a length of ribbon?’ she asked, closing the door again without any comment on the contents. I fetched her a piece from the drawer below and she held it wide apart. ‘Come here,’ she said. I tensed with embarrassment as she circled my waist with the ribbon, joining her hands behind my back to mark the circumference. ‘There! Now mine.’ Raising her arms above her head, she stood still as I encircled her narrow frame. She noted the discrepancy with a happy squeak. ‘Mine is smaller,’ she said, a scientist proved right. ‘But I am taller than you,’ she added, as though I should be disappointed. I wanted to ask her to repeat the experiment for the unexpected joy of the embrace, but I said nothing.
She picked one of my only two books from the shelf and sat on the bed. There was nowhere else to sit. I could have squatted on the small stool I used as a step to reach upper shelves, but that would have positioned me ludicrously low. ‘Aesop’s Fables’, Keziah read, leafing through it swiftly. At once, a flower that had been pressed between two pages fell out onto her lap. ‘Do you have a sweetheart?’
‘No.’ I went to take the flower from her, but she held it from me.
‘No? Why do you have this little keepsake if it isn’t a love token?’
* * *
Dr Edwards had handed the bud to me ‘Pasque flower. I visited my cousin in Cambridge. They grow more easily there.’
Long out of earth and water, it was limp and dull.
‘Can I revive it?’ I had said.
He had shaken his woolly head. ‘Alas, no. But you may press it.’ I had done so obediently and – except for occasionally having to avoid those pages as I read – I had forgotten it was placed there.
‘Medicinal and beautiful,’ Dr Edwards had said. ‘Of great relief for the treatment of . . .’ He had mumbled something.
‘For what?’ I had asked, nagging at him like a fly at a horse’s head.
‘For that uncomfortable time.’ His answer had left me none the wiser. He would have done a great deal better to teach me a useful herbal remedy than an incomplete anatomy.
* * *
‘You blush!’ Keziah said in triumph. ‘It is a token, after all.’
‘It is,’ I lied, I didn’t want her to grow impatient with me. I wanted to keep her held before me, her face towards mine, wanting to see what I’d say. Her two years of seniority must account for her insistence on continuing this uninteresting subject. I would indulge her. ‘A man gave it to me.’
‘A man?’ Keziah said. ‘Don’t you mean a boy?’
‘I will tell you one day who I mean.’ I felt taller than her now. ‘Let’s read, as our fathers think we do.’
She snorted, looking at me as though she were impressed. ‘A-anne!’ she said, making two syllables of my name. She sighed when I did not offer more information, frustrated by her stubborn playmate. ‘Which is your favourite, then ?’ She indicated the book.
I had no ready answer, it would be like choosing a favourite toe on my foot to favour one fable above another, all of them supported each. ‘The Lion and the Mouse,’ I said, to keep her happy.
She ran her finger down the list of contents and her eyes widened with delight when she found the one I had named. ‘The Lion and the Mouse,’ she said, wriggling further back on the bed. ‘Under the shade of a spreading tree, a lion dozed, his mighty head resting on his paws . . .’
I had not thought that she might read aloud to me. I’m afraid I did not listen to a word, instead I fixed my eyes on her face as if she were a poem I must commit to memory. I would happily have been tested on her blue eyes and her smooth mouth. As she spoke, her cheeks were gradually washed in a gentle pink, as though a painter had thinned red colour with water there.
‘ ‘‘And so,’’ said the mouse, ‘‘you were right to save me, Sir.’’ ’
‘Anne!’ My father shouted loud enough to be heard several houses away. In this one, there were doors opened and closed on each floor in answer and Keziah snapped the book shut.
‘Is he angry?’ she asked.
‘He is always angry,’ I said, and she giggled as though I had spoken in jest.
Heath and my father stood like sentries in the hall, one on either side of the staircase.
‘Did you read together?’ Heath asked brightly. Keziah nodded and took his arm.
As if goaded by this filial display, my father rounded on me. ‘Where were you?’ His face was red. It was only moments before that I had noted the charming flush on Keziah’s cheeks. This had quite the opposite effect. He was the victim of a careless artist. Even his eyebrows were mottled with crimson spots.
‘In my room, Father.’ I looked sideways and upwards at my accomplice. She stared ahead. He drew his breath in to condemn me, but Heath cut across him.
‘It is a girlish pleasure, to be gossiping together while they read.’ His stretched frame undulated with pleasure at the thought, as if he had rather been sat side by side with us talking of pressed flowers than knee to knee with my father. ‘What did you read?’
‘The Fables of Aesop,’ Keziah said. ‘Anne has a rather special edition.’
I frowned. Surely she didn’t mean that she might betray a confidence, even if it was not quite the secret she thought? I looked at her in question but she only smiled in return.
‘They will be reading together long past our business, Jaccob. That Aesop fellow was very busy with himself.’ Heath slithered toward the door. ‘Tuesday?’ he hissed to my father. ‘Tuesday,’ he whispered again to me.
My father’s ears were vermilion with fury by the time the door had closed behind them. What could he do? He must keep in Heath’s favour until contracts were signed and he had no proper reason to object to my keeping company with Keziah. He chased his anger like escaped bees all the rest of the evening, swatting it with curses and sharp words.
I could not eat at dinner. When I went to bed, I could not sleep. My thoughts were all of Keziah, her sharp eyes and soft lips, her teasing and her questions. Everything in my room seemed at once the better and the worse for her having been there. How coarse my bedcover felt, yet how special my books seemed now she had held them.
* * *
Keziah did not come with Heath the next time he visited. I felt choked and dizzy with despair when I realised he was alone. No bright hair kept his hat company and although I screwed up my eyes to peer down the street, in case she lagged behind him, I could not make her appear. Upstairs, the precious objects I had assembled to show her waited untouched. I wanted to run downstairs and fling myself at Heath, demanding an explanation. Instead, I waited on the stairs. I pretended to be caught unawares when the men emerged at the end of their business.
‘Anne!’ Heath said, genuinely surprised to see me. ‘Ah, yes.’ He remembered why I might be there. ‘Keziah is, alas, unwell and confined to bed.’ At the thought of her ailing, my eyes filled with tears. Heath showed he had noticed this with a tiny upwards movement of his chin. ‘She is not dying,’ he said, a little too heartily. ‘Indeed, she will accompa
ny me on my next visit.’ He straightened his mouth. It was not quite a smile. ‘She has her cousin to nurse her,’ he said.
Jealousy clapped hard hands over my ears and squeezed my throat so that I could not hear clearly or breathe easily.
‘You wish to see her soon?’ Heath laid a hand on my shoulder, his voice full of sympathy at what he imagined the cause of my distress. ‘You must,’ he ventured, ‘be very fond of reading.’
‘Yes!’ The word rushed out as quickly as a fish over a waterfall.
I tried to visualise Keziah at home, alone, in rooms I had never visited and amongst people I had never met. This was impossible, my image of her wobbled like unset jelly and wouldn’t stay put. So I placed a vision of her next to me. She walked alongside me as I ate or washed; she lay on my bed, curling her thin fingers over my knuckles as I stretched out my hand. She responded with gleaming praise after I read aloud. When my father belched at dinner, she caught my eye and giggled.
Frequently, I imagined her meeting some sort of accident. The heroine of the hour, I would rescue and then nurse her. Her gratitude would, I thought, be lifelong and fulsome. Although I was a pixie to her Amazon, I felt protective of her. My Aunt Elizabeth had a small dead bird, preserved as in life, its feathers shining, with only its glass eyes giving the game away. I would keep Keziah under such a glass dome if I could. How could Dr Edwards not have felt the same about me? I did not want to sully her with my desires.
* * *
She was not with her father at the next visit either. My heart sank so low it hindered my walking. I did not wait in the hall, I could not bear how bleak the place was without her. Instead, I was summoned there.
‘Anne,’ Heath held out a slip of paper to me. ‘Keziah asked me to give you this.’
As I went to take it from him, I tried to remember how I would extend my arm if nothing mattered, how my breath would come naturally if I did not think I might expire with happiness. My actions were as jerky as if a violent puppeteer pulled my strings.
Heath noticed nothing amiss. ‘What does she write?’ he said. ‘She held her arm over the page so that I might not see.’ He turned to my father. ‘These girls . . .’ he rippled like a worm on water, ‘they love to have their secrets!’
‘What does she write?’ my father asked in chilly echo. I unfolded the paper, dreading that its contents might make me tremble or faint, or fall in twitching apoplexy with grief or joy.
The letters swam; for a moment I forgot how words were made. ‘My favourite fable is ‘‘The Tiger and the Crane’’.’ Nothing more.
Both men said ‘Ah’ and ‘Oh’ together.
‘Prepare it for the next time,’ Heath said, waving his flexible hand.
* * *
When I heard Keziah’s voice in the hall, I had to put my hands over my mouth to prevent shrieking my joy. She came to my room without waiting for me to collect her. She seemed to bring extra air with her and I felt light-headed when I stood up. For a moment, the acquiescent, adoring companion of my imagination argued with reality. She was somehow less visible than before, yet more solid. I shrugged in greeting.
She appeared momentarily dismayed. She cast her eyes about my bleak room, looking as though she had expected bunting or some other decoration to welcome her. Then she put her shoulders back, bracing herself to be polite. ‘Today you must tell me about the flower,’ she instructed, positioning herself on the bed. ‘You are a dark one, Anne. Who knew you might have an admirer?’
This tack irritated me. I had many important things to share with her but we’d be tiresomely delayed if I had to invent an amour. ‘First, I want to show you some treasure,’ I said.
‘More tokens?’ She bit her lip in anticipation. ‘From more men?’
‘This,’ I said, taking a little tin box from under my bed.
She tipped her head on one side, as a dog does when you whistle. I fumbled as I opened it, for I had never done so in company before. She leaned closer, so near to me that one wayward curl caught on my mouth.
‘What’s in it?’ she said, holding her hair from me, though I would have left it there, tickling till my lips tingled. ‘What’s that?’ She peered inside and pointed.
The mouse’s skull glowed pale white.
‘Anne!’ Keziah sat up, straightening her spine. ‘I don’t care to look too well, but I can see that there are still morsels of flesh on it.’
The mouse had not been dead long, you would hardly have expected it to be clean bone yet. I lifted the tin up, thinking that she might yet be intrigued if she gave its contents more careful examination.
She recoiled, sniffing melodramatically. ‘Why do you keep it?’ she said.
‘I think it is beautiful,’ I said, but even as I spoke the object seemed to lose its lustre under her squeamish gaze. I could not risk showing her anything else, her scrutiny might diminish everything else I had collected. I could not think how best to explain to her the charm of the decayed or withered. We sat in silence for a while, and the responsibility of not disappointing her further weighed heavy on me.
I decided that I would give her something I had only, until now, made for my own pleasure. ‘Watch!’ I said, delighted with my idea. ‘I will fashion you a necklace !’ I tugged at my hair and selected the longest strand from those that I had pulled free.
Putting the hair to my mouth, I spat copiously at regular intervals along its length till a bead of saliva hung suspended at each point, a neat inch apart. I had practised before and this was going to be the most perfect example yet. I did not look up until I was finished when, in triumph, I held the natural necklace aloft. The wet, translucent pearls twinkled briefly then some slowly dropped, elongating into ribbons of spittle as they fell. Keziah was transfixed. I was about to suggest that she attempt the feat herself, as a gift to me, when I realised her expression was not one of admiration, but horror.
‘Oh!’ She said. She put both hands to her mouth as if she was about to retch. ‘Oh!’ she said again, taking in lungfuls of air and expelling them loudly. ‘That is quite—’ she shook her head as if choosing just the right word, ‘—disgusting!’ she finished, which I thought a poor choice after such careful consideration. She rolled her eyes and clutched her throat for some time before subsiding.
I watched this display dispassionately. I thought how odd it was that she had so recently entered my room gilded, but would leave tarnished and dull. I had laid secrets at her feet but she had kicked them aside. Until that moment, I had wished I might extend each minute of every hour to have more time to relish her company, now I wondered how much longer I could stand to have her near. Wearily, I closed my eyes.
‘A-anne!’ Again she made two notes where there should be only one. ‘Wake up!’ As this was the last time I would have to do her bidding, I obeyed.
‘I did not sleep,’ I said. ‘I was merely waiting till your performance had ended.’
‘Indeed?’ Her voice sharpened with spite. ‘My performance bored you? Better to be bored than repulsed, I can tell you.’
‘I cannot help it if you are not curious about the natural world.’
With a sudden instinct, I looked to where my little tin sat beside her and thought I should pick it up, but I was too late. Keziah followed my gaze then reached for it and held it in front of her. Then, with elaborate care, she turned it upside down.
The things I had collected over many months lay spread out on the floor, vulnerable and exposed.
Keziah examined them with distaste. ‘A morbid tableau,’ she pronounced. Holding her finger and thumb like tongs, she picked up first one item, then another. ‘A dead spider! A piece of wood! A fingernail!’ she said, as though completing an inventory. ‘A snail shell with a dead snail inside! A baby bird!’ She turned to me with the solemnity of an advocate. ‘You are quite insane.’
Then she spied something else. As if holding a lit torch alof
t to better light her way, she went straight to the coil of paper among the ruins of my treasury. ‘Oh, you kept this?’ she said, retrieving it with relish. She read aloud to me, but I had learned what it said. ‘My favourite fable is ‘‘The Tiger and the Crane’’.’ Then she looked afraid, as though it were a spell reversed. ‘Why did you keep this, Anne?’
Because your hands had touched it, I thought. Because I imagined that those words came from your head to my heart.
My father’s shouting my name was a relief to us both. She was nearer the door than I and as she rose to leave, she suddenly swooped like a bird of prey to the shelf and seized the book of fables. ‘Shall I show your father your flower?’ she sang, her talons holding tight. You could show him a whole bouquet and he wouldn’t care, I thought, but I did not want her to have my book and tried to snatch it back. She held it above her head and her useful stature kept it far away from me.
Galloping down the stairs, she arrived laughing in front of the men and started to open her prize. I waited for her to hold out the shrivelled bloom for inspection, but instead she began to turn the pages.
‘What is all this?’ I heard her say. As if my feet were nailed to the floor, I was unable to move. I understood what she was looking at.
‘Miscellaneous.’ Keziah read. ‘Debt. Budget. Constituency. Ensign. Carnet. Freight. Abaft. Disbursement. Chock. Demurrage.’ My father pushed out his lips in bewilderment as he recognised the terms.
They were words that I had not understood, words that I had captured listening outside his room, and I had written them down to examine them later. She would have gone on, but Keziah’s father took her hand and removed the book. He regarded my list with solemn deliberation. ‘They are not spelled thus,’ he said, handing it to me. Very slowly, he closed one eye in a last, kind wink.
Keziah stood in the doorway. Directly above her was a large stone curlicue, one of a pair that needlessly decorated the lintel. If it cracked and fell, it would flatten her like linen under a smoother. I wanted this to happen so much that my teeth felt loose in my gums. Had I been tall enough, I would have stretched my fingers to its edge and pushed. The notion that she would not then enjoy herself any more was both pleasing and sensible. Her punishment would be in my prayers that night – with an extra plea that I might witness it.
