Florence and Giles Page 21

  It colded now and even under my cloak I shivered. The frost had come down hard and the road was slippery, so that sometimes the wheels of the trap would slide across it in a most alarming way. I had so little experience of driving the trap, just a few minutes when John occasionally let me try for fun, that I nervoused to go too quickly, even though I knew those other horses, the horses of the night, were flying fast. I met only a farmer’s cart upon the road and, soon as I saw it, drew the hood of my cloak over my face so that I would not be recognised. The driver of the cart did not hail me but simply raised his whip by way of greeting, which I repaid with a silent nod.

  After that I aloned with the moon and the squeaking of the bats that darted here and there; fear rose up my gullet, like food too rich to digest, but not of the night, which I regarded as my friend, but of what I had to accomplish and of not being able to do it.

  Eventually lights began to appear in the distance in front of me and to multiply the further I went, and in a few minutes I outskirted the town, passing the first scattered houses. I turned round and picked out of the trap the item I had taken from Miss Taylor’s room, her hat. I lowered my hood and placed the hat firmly upon my head and drew the veil over my face, entering Main Street with my features shielded from view as Miss Taylor’s had been when we visited the dentist. There were few people about, for it was a night to indoors and huddle around a fire, an idea that appealed me now. At the turn to the railroad station I made a mess of controlling the reins and could in no way get Bluebird to turn, so that before I knew it we were almost past the turn.

  ‘Whoa, boy!’ I called out, giving the reins a good jerk, for stopping him was one thing I could do. The good old horse duly halted. I hopped down from the box and, taking his bridle, turned him around and, when he was pointed in the right direction, got back up on the box and flicked the reins to start him up again. In a couple of minutes we were trotting up to the station.

  Right away the silence was gone. There was a bustle of people walking to and from the station and many buggies and carts going in either direction too. I awared the clanking of metal and, as I approached the railroad station itself, the hiss of steam, for there, like a dragon lying in wait for me, sat the locomotive, its long tail of passenger cars stretching out behind it. Men were shouting, doors crashing shut, horses whinnying. At first I afraided at all this commotion, but when I saw that no one paid me any attention, for I was but another among many, I realised it was to my advantage. I stopped the trap by a hitching rail, climbed down and hitched Bluebird to it. I knew where I was going from the time we brought Giles here when he went off to school. Looking neither right nor left, I marched straight into the booking hall, past the people gathered there, many of them saying goodbyes to loved ones, and up to the ticket window. There was no one behind it.

  I looked around. A man and woman had come up behind me. The man was carrying a carpet bag and it evidented they were going for a train. I looked up and saw the station clock and near dropped dead from shock. It wanted only ten minutes before nine o’clock. If I didn’t hurry I would be too late for the Flyer, which I knew departed upon the hour.

  The man and woman were behind me now, waiting in line, and I sensed them impatienting. The woman bent her head over my shoulder. ‘You have to tap the glass,’ she said and gave the window a sharp rap with her knuckles. As if by magic a small bald head bobbed up behind the counter in front of me.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’ he said.

  ‘I’d like to buy a ticket on the Flyer for New York, please.’

  ‘Would that be a return, ma’am?’

  ‘No,’ I loud-and-cleared. ‘Just the one way. I shall not be coming back.’

  He handed me a ticket and I paid him from the money I had taken from Miss Taylor’s purse. The man behind straightway began purchasing tickets for him and his companion and didn’t seem to give me another thought.

  I walked out of the ticket hall to the track. As I approached the train a cloud of steam hissed from the locomotive and engulfed me, for which by instinct I gratefulled, for it hid me quite, until I reminded myself that this would not do, that I needed to be seen. I duly walked the whole length of the train and back to the front again, nervousing inside, for the locomotive was pawing the ground, anxious to be off, snorting louder and louder as it eagered. At the front car I found a group of some six or seven men mounting the stairs and bolded up to them. Spotting me, one of them pulled another man aside and, sweeping off his hat, indicated the steps. ‘After you, ma’am.’

  I nodded a thanks and upped the steps. The car was more than half full, for the train had made many more stops before this one. I walked along the aisle, looking this way and that as though searching for a seat. Near the end of the car a man in a loud check suit and a bowler hat glanced up as he saw me pass. He hastily moved a carpet bag from the seat next to him and said, ‘Here, ma’am, this seat is free.’

  I did not know what to do, for I could not take the seat, but nor did I feel I could rudely ignore him. My moment’s hesitation near cost me dear, I can tell you. Collecting myself quickly, I nodded a thanks and waved a dismissive hand and proceeded to the end of the car and out the door, as if to go through to the next car in the hope of finding a better seat. My plan was to descend by the steps at the end of the car and make my getaway, but as I exited the first car into the second a couple of ladies were coming through from the opposite direction and I had to give way to them.

  When they had gone I was about to descend the steps when I heard a voice behind me. ‘You’ll find it just as busy the whole length of the car, ma’am.’

  I turned and found the loud check. He took off his hat and leered me one. I faltered, feeling trapped. There was a sudden great hiss of steam from the locomotive. The train gave an almighty jerk and I had to grab hold of the door frame so as not to stumble.

  ‘I – I.’

  ‘Come on, ma’am, I won’t bite you, y’know.’

  ‘Why, of course, thank you,’ I said. ‘But you see, I wasn’t going to look for another seat. I was after my bag, which I left a couple of cars back.’

  ‘Why, ma’am, I’d be happy to go fetch it for you. If’n you’ll just describe it to me, that is.’

  The train lurched again. ‘You can’t miss it, it – it’s red. Bright red velveteen. I put it down on the last seat in the car before this one. I – I was waving goodbye to my sister and wouldn’t you know I was so upset at leaving her that I went and forgot all about it. What a nincompoop I am! Would you really be so kind as to go fetch it for me?’

  He put his hat back on and tipped the brim to me. ‘It’ll be my pleasure, ma’am. Now, you just go back there and sit where I was sitting – and be sure to take the seat by the window – and I’ll be back directly with your bag.’

  As he disappeared into the next car the train jolted again and this time there was another hiss, a loud grinding of metal upon metal and through the open doorway I saw the booking office begin to move. I looked right and left; there was no one in sight. I whipped off my hat and stuffed it under my cloak and downed the steps and stood on the bottom one. The train was moving at a brisk walking pace and gathering speed all the time; if I didn’t jump now it would be too late. I jumped and managed not to stumble, which was just as well, for I no longer wanted to draw attention to myself.

  The trackside was still busy with people waving their friends goodbye and porters hereing and thereing. I pulled my hood over my head and fast-awayed, not going through the booking hall this time but around it, and could not help smiling to myself at the thought of the loud check searching for a red velveteen bag he would never find. Of course, Miss Taylor would have had a bag if she had really caught the train, but if I had taken one I would have had to leave it on board, and it later being found abandoned might suspicion things more. I had to hope that any witnesses to the veiled woman at the station misremembered whether or not she was carrying baggage.

  In the street outside I last-looked at Bluebird and the
trap. The good old horse stood waiting patiently as I had left him. He was in for a mighty long cold wait, which brought a tear to my eye, for I sorried to have caused him that. I thought of Theo, lying on the cold ground with the frost now stiffening his hair, and, I do confess, shed a tear or two more at that.

  What had taken so little time in the trap, even though at the time I felt I slowed because of my inexperience at driving, now seemed to take an age on foot. It must have been a good twenty minutes before I cleared the outskirts of the town. I tireded not only because I would normally have long been in bed but from all that I had been through, the heavy work of lifting the wood and stones off the well and then putting them back, hauling poor Theo around, the running hither and thither, and also at the very thought that I now had ten miles to walk or else all so far would be for nought.

  The road lonelied and now every noise spooked me. Each cry of the owl made me jump, each skimming bat made me duck. A couple of times I heard carriages coming and had to leave the road and hide behind a tree. More than once I stumbled and fell, hurting my knees and grazing my hands. The wind got up and for the last few miles blew directly into my face as if trying to hold me back.

  What made the journey worse was my anxiousing. For it suddenly struck me that there was one part of my plan over which I had no control. When Theo did not return home his tutor and the Van Hoosier servants would begin to worry and eventually they would go out to look for him. If they didn’t find him around the grounds of his own house then it would logical next to seek him at Blithe, where they knew he was a frequent visitor.

  I desperated to search my mind. How exactly had I left Theo? It obvioused that his people would not be able to take the shortcut through the woods to Blithe because it would impossible in the dark, but would have to up their drive and go round by the main road. My hope was that they would come across Theo as they upped the drive. Now, I had dumped his body beside the drive, but how close to it did I leave him? If it was too far away, they might simply walk right past him in the dark and proceed to Blithe, where of course they would find the house in darkness and no reply to their knocking at the door, with the servants all gone and me not there. This in turn would surprise them, for they would not know about the servants being sent away. They might think something had happened at Blithe, something that perhaps involved Theo – for his absence and the absence of everyone from Blithe would too much coincidence not to connect. If they should enter the house and find me gone, I would not be able to explain it away.

  At one point I so wearied and the road ahead so endlessed that I all but decided I might as well give up and lay me down to sleep where I was and let them find me and do to me what they would, for I was almost past caring. Then I looked up and saw to my left, a few hundred yards away, the chimneys of a great house topping the trees. It was the Van Hoosier place! I was not more than half an hour from home.

  The thought of Blithe and Giles and all at last again being as it had always been spurred me on. I quickened my pace, heart-in-mouthing it past the entrance to the Van Hoosier drive as I feared any moment the family’s servants might come rushing out, hunting for Theo. But no one did. By now I was tripping and stumbling at every step, I so exhausted, and it seemed another age before our drive came in sight. At last there it was and I alonged it almost at a trot, finding new energy from being so close. Inside the house, I straighted to the kitchen, poured myself a big glass of milk and cut myself a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese and sat at the kitchen table and devoured them as if I hadn’t eaten for days, which, when I thought about it, was the plain truth.

  When I had sat there about half an hour I found my eyelids beginning to droop and knew it was time to move again or else I would be asleep until the servants came back and found me, and a great deal more besides. I opened the stove, took a poker and stirred up the fire. I took Miss Taylor’s hat and thrust it into the flames and watched until it had turned to ash and could never again be seen for what it was. Then I long-corridored toward the foot of my tower. It shivered me quite, what had happened on the stairs there, and as I pushed open the door that led to them I half expected to see the shape of Theo stretched out on the banister rail. It looked strangely empty without him. I overed the banister and upstairsed. I had kept all thought of Giles from my mind or else I would have been able to do nothing, for at heart I feared I might have given him too large a dose of chloroform and anxioused that after all I had been through I might have done the very thing I feared most.

  Indeed, I near screamed out when I lifted the trapdoor and saw him lying there; he so stilled and paled in the moonlight he looked like a corpse, and for a moment or two I could not go to him for fear of confirming my worst thoughts. But when I did I saw his breast rise and fall gently and finally let my own breath out.

  It problemed me now how to get Giles back into his bed. I shook him and he stirred and muttered something I could not make out. I got behind him and put my arms under his shoulders and raised him up so he was sitting. I dragged him like this over to the open trapdoor and laid him down with his feet toward the hole. Leaving him there, I went down the first few steps and stood with my head and shoulders through the opening. Then I pulled Giles toward me. It fortuned he was so small and light. I pulled him down by his feet and eventually got him so he was lying on the steps, with his feet a couple of steps above mine.

  At this moment I near let him go, for I sudden-frighted when I heard a cock crow. Sure enough, the first red of dawn was fingering the sky and I knew I must hurry, for I had not long before the servants would return. We made our way down a step at a time, me going first and then pulling Giles after me, until we footed the first flight of steps and reached the landing. Now it was all much easier. I gentled Giles to the floor and went back and closed the trapdoor. Back down with my brother I got my shoulder under his and carried him down the rest of the stairs as he had helped me when I hurt my ankle. What I dreaded now were the banisters, for I doubted I had strength even for the littlest exertion. When we reached the point where we had to overbanister I leaned Giles against them so that his head drooped over. Holding on to him so he did not fall, I bent and lifted one of his legs and hauled it up over the banisters, so that he ended up lying along the rail, an arm and a leg either side, as poor Theo had done. Then I overbanistered myself and stood on the other side, resting a moment, catching my breath. It was the last thing I had to do, I told myself, the very last thing. I gave Giles a tug but it was a might too hard and I felt myself fall backwards, so that we both landed in a heap on the floor with him on top of me. No matter, it was not a big fall and there was nothing broke. I rolled Giles off me, got to my feet, pulled him to his and this time picked him up and carried him in my arms, gratefulling that I am tall and strong and he is but little and light.

  I upstairsed him to his room, where I undressed him, pulled on his nightshirt and put him to bed. As I left the room, I paused in the doorway and looked back at him for a minute or so to observe the rise and fall of his breath and make sure all was well. I had already begun to turn away when I awared that something in the picture of my brother sleeping peacefully jarred, although I could not think what. I almost dismissed the feeling as a silly illusion such as extreme fatigue will cause, for staring at the scene I saw nothing untoward. And then there it was. A book, on the little cupboard by my brother’s bed. Of course, as if Giles ever took a book to bed!

  I walked over and picked it up and recognised at once Miss Taylor’s Bible, the same in which I found the steamship tickets. At first I thought to leave it there. I was so tired and longed for sleep, and after all, it was not unthinkable that she had forgot it; her bags were all packed and in reality no doubt she had.

  But then it might suspicion someone because she had not taken it and I did not want any hint of doubt that she had left. I tucked it under my arm and downstairsed, stumbling like a drunkard as I went, for I could scarce now stay awake. In the kitchen I opened up the stove, picked up the poker, gave the f
ire another stir and and was about to drop the book into the flames when something fluttered out and floated like a butterfly to the floor. I picked it up and found myself looking at a photograph. My eyes so ached for sleep they would hardly focus, and I stared at the image not able to make sense of what I saw.

  Something familiared about the young woman I was looking at, something in the way she stood or her dress, as though I had seen the picture before. I reached out for the memory, but could not grasp it and I almost tore the wretched thing in two, the feeling frustrated me so.

  I shook my head, screwed up my eyes and focused again on the woman’s face and then I saw. Of course! It was Miss Taylor, only younger, without the lines time must since have etched upon her face, though with that same determined, all-knowing look, that same smug smile. I relieved a sigh. So that was it, that was what I had recognised; all was explained.

  I picked up the Bible with my other hand and consigned it to the fire, then the picture after it, to let the witch burn as she would surely burn in Hell. I watched as tongues of flame eagerly licked its edges. The top of the picture caught fire first and the evil woman’s face blackened and then disappeared. And then, there it was again, as I stared at what was left of her, the body without the mocking face, that feeling of some memory I could not touch, only strangely more powerful now, overwhelming me quite, so my legs went weak beneath me and I almost feared to faint. I reached out to snatch the picture from the fire, but too late; it burst into flames and I had to pull back or be burned, and then it was gone.

  The lost memory nagged at me all the way back upstairs, and I almost wished I had not burned the photograph, for I sured if I had had chance to look at it properly I would have found what bothered me about it so. But it was too late now and I told myself to let it go, for it was only my fanciful mind, exhausted beyond endurance and seeing things that were not there.