‘A mistake?’
She proffered a plate of tiny tea cakes but I declined. She took one herself and popped it whole into her mouth and masticated slowly for a moment or two. The clock on the mantelpiece began to tick louder. She swallowed. ‘Yes, a mistake. All that skating and running around in the cold. I fear it has done his chest no favours.’
‘But, Mrs Van Hoosier, if I may make so bold –’
‘You may not.’ She inserted another cake into her mouth and chewed it so angrily I all but felt sorry for it. When it was finally dead she turned and fixed me a look, as though she were a scientist and I some kind of bug she was microscoping. ‘The problem is, Florence, that you have been left to run wild. I think your uncle should have kept a closer eye on you. There is more to being a guardian than providing a home and food.’
I eagered a question. ‘Do you know my uncle?’
‘No, I’m afraid I never had that pleasure, never even heard of the man until we bought this place, although I did meet your stepmother once.’
‘What was she like?’
She screwed up her eyes, as if shutting out the present and gazing at the long-distant past. Finally she opened them and picked up a bell from the table beside her. ‘Do you know, it was years ago, when she wasn’t much more than a girl. She was pretty, though not at all sophisticated, but other than that I don’t rightly remember her at all. Then I heard she’d married someone from these parts.’ She rang the bell.
‘That would be my father,’ I said.
‘So it would seem,’ she said.
‘And they died, in a boating accident, I believe.’
‘How tragic,’ said Mrs Van Hoosier as if it wasn’t at all. Melville appeared in the doorway. ‘Anyhow,’ she continued, ‘I think perhaps it would be a good idea if Theo were to visit you a little less. He has his lessons to learn and, what with his illness, his tutor fears he’s getting behind…’
‘Y-you’re stopping his visits?’ I shocked how this suddened to matter to me. I would not have thought to have cared.
‘No, my dear, I wouldn’t want to deprive my son of all amusement. I’m just reining back on them a little, is all. I think too much excitement is not good for him. Melville, ask for the young lady’s carriage to be brought round, would you?’
That night was all toss-and-turn and longing for dawn; I was too mindfilled to sleep. From being a girl who had too much time on her hands, I now found myself fully occupied by all the things that were happening in my life. First there was poor Giles, and what I between-the-linesed from his letters. Other than that ambiguous phrase about the pinching and hitting, there was nothing I could actually put my finger on, no direct complaint, although I certained he would make one if he were really in trouble or upset. Then, at one of my many wakings, it came to me, wondering me why I hadn’t thought of it before. Of course, his letters would be censored; a teacher would read them before they were allowed to be sent home. Any bald statement of bullying would certainly be excised; the school would not want bad impressions being conveyed that might anxious parents; that would not do at all. As you may imagine, the thought did not comfort me one bit.
Next I was thinking about Theo Van Hoosier. Not just how I would miss his visits, odd fellow though he was, but also how Mrs Van Hoosier had in-betweened me with her ruling that he could still visit, but much less often. It would have been better if she had banned him altogether. As things stood, I would not be able to take to the library in the afternoons, but would still have to keep watch for Theo from the tower. Only now there would be a great deal more three-and-a-halfing, for there would be many more afternoons when Theo didn’t show at all, and the frustatory of it was that I would never know when he was coming and when not, so would have to do it for longer and, most of the time, for no reason at all. I cursed Theo that he had ever come into my life and inconvenienced me so, and at the same time I found myself missing him and wishing him here. It was the rook and the virgin snow all over again.
But by far the most wakery thing that night was not what Mrs Van Hoosier had said about her son, but the remarks she had carelessed about my uncle and my stepmother. Even when I was thinking about Theo, or worrying over Giles, whatever my thoughts, that undertowed them all.
Of course, I had not gotten myself so far through life without wondering about my parents. I had tried asking Mrs Grouse about them but she always stonewalled me. ‘I only know what I have been told. Your mother went out of the world as you came into it and your father died in a boating accident, along with Master Giles’s mother, when he was still a baby,’ was all she would say.
I attempted going at it another way, by questioning her about my lineage, putting it to her that since Giles and I bore the same surname as our uncle, then our father must have been his brother. ‘I have met your uncle only once, Miss Florence,’ she said, in the manner of someone ducking a question not because they subterfuged but rather to discount any possibility of making a mistake, ‘and that was in New York when he engaged me to come here and run the house and look after Master Giles and you. You were four years old then and that’s all I know. We didn’t discuss your family tree.’
Now I thought how I could maybe find out more if I wrote my uncle and simply asked him straight out to tell me who I was and all about my parents, but then of course it was not so simple. My uncle had given strict orders to illiterate me; he wouldn’t be best pleased to find my penmanship turning up in his morning mail.
It obvioused me it was no use putting the thing to Mrs Grouse again. She was a simple soul who transparented her feelings; she was like George Washington, she couldn’t tell a lie. If she’d been hiding anything, I would have guessed straightway. She told me nothing, not because she would not, but simply because she didn’t know. Asking her again about my mother and father would bring no information but simply alert her to my curiosity and any other action I might take.
Quite what that action would be conundrummed me quite. I spent a whole afternoon in the tower not reading but thinking about it, and dozing, of course, having sleeplessed the night. Every time I felt my head nodding and jerked back to waking, I had to make the mad dash down to the front door in case I’d missed Theo, even though in my heart of hearts I knew he wouldn’t be coming that day; I couldn’t take the risk. I wished he were there and, back in the tower after fruitlessing yet another front-dooring, I pretended he was and imagined us face-to-facing, me on the chaise, he on the captain’s chair, discussing my problem.
‘So that’s it,’ I told him, having nutshelled the whole thing for him. ‘What can I do?’
He stroked his chin and got up and paced about in a most businesslike way, purposefulling long strides, hands behind his back. Finally he stopped and looked down at me, cracking open a smile. ‘Documents,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
He came over to me and bent down on one knee, seizing my upper arms in his big bony hands. ‘Don’t you see, there must be documents relating to you. Everyone has documents. And likely they’re somewhere in Blithe House.’ He released me and stood looking at me, awaiting a reaction.
I eagered forward in my chair and then slumped back. ‘Unless my uncle took them with him to New York when he cleared out.’
My imaginary Theo shrugged, which had the look of a praying mantis trying to slough its skin. ‘Perhaps. But maybe he didn’t. It’s worth a try.’
I could have hugged him, except of course he wasn’t there, and because even if he had have been, it might have brought on another poem. Instead, I windowed the empty drive, void of his gangling figure, and in that way thanked him by missing him more.
Theo was right. Although my upbringing had unworldlied me, I knew from my reading that nobody goes through this