John Harding 2-Book Gothic Collection. John Harding
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.
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.
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