John Harding 2-Book Gothic Collection. John Harding

       3

      Suddenly my existence was uncosied. I was seriously problemed. First I had to make sure I didn’t fail to show up for a meal again, lest next time they went looking for me they find me, with all the repercussions that would involve. But the question was easier posed than solved. I had no timepiece. Then over a late luncheon, when Mrs Grouse was so full of Theo Van Hoosier she didn’t think to interrogate me as to my whereabouts earlier, I pictured me something about the library that might undifficulty me regarding my problem and, as soon as I’d finished eating, slipped off and made my way there.

      Sure enough, tucked away in a dark corner, mute and unnoticed, was a grandfather clock. It was big, taller than I, though not nearly so tall as Theo Van Hoosier, the prospect of whose daily visits almost unthrilled me of the finding of the clock. Gingerly I opened the case, as I had seen John do with other clocks in the house, and felt about for the key. At first I thought I was to be unfortuned, but then as I empty-handed from the case there was a tinkle as my little finger touched something hanging from a tiny hook and there was the key. I inserted it in the hole in the face and began winding, being careful to stop when I met resistance, for John had warned me that overwinding had been the death of many a timepiece.

      I had noted the time when leaving the kitchen and to be safe added fifteen minutes on to that to allow for my getting to the library and for the finding of the key. The clock had a satisfyingly loud tick and I thought how at last I would no longer feel alone here. There would be me, my books and something akin to another heartbeat, if only in its regularity. Something, moreover, that wasn’t Theo Van Hoosier.

      Of course, no sooner did the starting of the clock end one problem than it began another. For if anyone should venture into the library its ticking was so loud they could not fail to notice it and so be set to wondering who had started it and kept it wound and then on to working out who had been here. I shrugged the threat away. So be it. I had to know the time during my sojourns here or I would be discovered anyway. Besides, no one else had ever been in here in all my librarying years, so it unlikelied anyone would now. Too bad if they did; it was a risk I had to take.

      That afternoon it colded and our first snow of the fall fell. I watched it gleefully, hoping it would mean that Theo Van Hoosier would not be able to visit. Surely if his asthma was enough to keep him from school he should not be trudging through snow with it? I kept my fingers crossed and imagined him asthmaed up at home, consoling himself with a bad verse or two.

      With this promise of salvation, though, the snow difficulted me in another way. Or rather the drop in temperature did. I had never wintered much in the library, because it had no fire and colded there, and because before I always had Giles to keep me amused elsewhere. Although I tried gamely, determined reader that I am, to carry on there, my fingers were so cold I could scarce hold my book or turn its pages, let alone keep my numbed mind on it. I slipped out of the room and by means of the back staircase made my way to the floor above. There I found a bedroom whose stripped bed was quilted only in dust, but footing it was an oak linen chest in which were three thick blankets. Of course, there was riskery in transporting these to the library, because if I encountered anyone en route I would be completely unexplained. And unlike a book, I could not simply slip a bulky blanket inside my dress.

      Nevertheless, without the blankets I would not be able to read anyway, so it had to be done. I resolved to take all three at once since one would be just as hard to conceal as three and the fewer blanketed trips I made, the lower the risk. They were a heavy and awkward burden, the three together piled so high I could scarce see over them, but I outed the room and pulled the door shut after me with a skill of foot-flickery. I had halfwayed down the back stairs and was about to make the turn in them when I heard the unmistakable creak of a foot on the bottom step of the flight below. I near dropped my load. It was no good turning and running, one way or another I would be caught. There was nothing for it but to stand and await my fate. I held my breath, listening for another step below. It never came. Instead I heard Mary’s voice, talking to herself (ah, I thought, so I am not the only one who does that!). ‘Now where did I put the darned thing? I made sure it was in my pocket. Damnation, I shall have to go back for it.’

      I heard a slight grateful groan as the stair released her foot and then angry footsteps hurrying along the corridor below. I waited a moment after their sound had faded away, then scurried down, tore along the passage and ducked through the library door.

      There I pushed together two of the big leather wingbacked armchairs, toe to toe, and nested me in them with two of the blankets for a bed and the third stretched over the tops of the chair backs to make a canopy. I thought of it as my own four-poster, though of course it had nary a single one. When I left the room I pushed apart the chairs again, folded the blankets and hid them behind a chaise longue. It might offchance that someone entering the room would just not notice the clock, or attach the correct significance to it if they did, clocks being an ever present in many rooms and an often unnoticed background kind of thing. But they could not fail to see my nest and so it had to be constructed every day anew.

      Thus began a new pattern to my days. The mornings I tick-tocked away in my nest, contenting me over my books until the clock struck the quarter hour before one, when I denested, slipped from the room and hurried to lunch. But soon as Theo Van Hoosier began to call, the afternoons problemed me anew. I had no way of knowing what time he might arrive and despite my best efforts to schedule him he proved as unreliable as he was tall. Sometimes he appeared directly after lunch; others he turned up as late as half past four. He excused himself on the grounds that he had a tutor and was dependent upon the whimmery of same.

      Now, suppose I went to the library and young Van Hoosier came while I was there, it would be as bad as the time I missed lunch. They would search for me and either my secret would be discovered or later they would question it out of me. On the other hand, if I hung around in the drawing room or the kitchen waiting for Theo and he arrived late, I could waste hours of precious reading time.

      That is what I was forced to do, the first few Van Hoosier days. I sat in a twiddlery of thumbs looking out the window at the snow or playing solitaire. The worst thing was my idleness attentioned me to Mrs Grouse and set her to wondering why she had not noticed it before; she didn’t guess how I had always out-of-sighted-out-of-minded me, and it started her talking about me doing something useful, such as learning to sew. She even sat me down one day and began to mystify me with stitchery. I thought I would lose my mind.

      I have read somewhere that boredom mothers