Florence and Giles

by John Harding

  ‘Why, Florence,’ pleasanted Miss Taylor as if nothing had happened, when Mary came in to collect the plates after our main course, ‘you’ve eaten next to nothing. Come now, surely you can manage a little bit more?’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Come now, not even to please me?’

  At this I gave a little laugh, for after what had happened earlier it was a rich piece of irony. But if she could keep up the pretence, then so could I.

  ‘No, miss, not even for that.’

  ‘Very well, then. Mary, you may remove the plates.’

  After Mary had gone I bolded. I am not one to take things lying down and had made up my mind to fight this fiend, no matter what supernatural powers she might have at her beck and call. ‘You know, miss, I have noticed that you yourself scarce eat enough to keep a sparrow alive.’

  Her gaunt face flushed. ‘I am not a growing girl who needs all her nourishment.’

  ‘Yes, miss, but surely any body, any living body, has need of some sustenance.’

  She picked up her napkin and wiped her mouth, a gesture that pleased me, for I saw she was taken aback by my forth-rightness and needed the pause to think. ‘There are many reasons why a person may be off her food. Grief and loss – for example, you understand – can curtail the appetite.’

  At this point Mary returned with our dessert, a rice pudding, and began to dole it out. When she reached Miss Taylor, our new governess motioned it away, defianting me one, as though to say she was what she was and would do what she wished and no questions of mine would ever alter that.

  20

  That night I restlessed once more and at last false-nightwalked, and had the same result as before. I pushed open the door of Giles’s room and found my brother fast asleep and Miss Taylor vulturing over him, almost licking her lips. So intent upon her prey was she, she neither looked up nor gave any other sense of awaring of my presence, so that in the end I left her to it and stole back to my own bed, where I shivered me until dawn, when I finally fell into something resembling sleep.

  I nervoused all morning in the schoolroom, which, given what later occurred, made me think afterward that I had premonitioned the shock to come. Unable to settle, I asked permission of Miss Taylor to go down to the library to search out another book. Poe, whom I had always loved more perhaps than any other author save, of course, Shakespeare, was having a depressing effect upon my spirits. There was too much horror in my own life to want to read of more. I downstairsed and was in the main corridor of the western wing when I suddenly afraided for what I could see ahead. There, in the dim light, for there are no windows in that section of the passage and you have only the light from either end, I saw I was approaching a looking glass, one that I had never taken notice of before, for why would I have glanced in it when the light was too poor to see much of my reflection? As soon as I awared of the mirror, my heart commenced to racing, its wings franticking in my breast, because even before I looked into it, I certained what I would see. I stopped and thought to turn back, but then curiosity, as it always will with me, overcame fear, so that I began to edge my way toward it. It was almost like a dream. For the first time I took in the pictures on the wall, dingy oils of long-dead ancestors of my uncle’s, no doubt, doughty matrons and stern-looking men of business in tight collars and ties. And then I was at the looking glass, which was but a small one, a heavy gilt frame binding a square of dusty glass. And of course, when I lifted my head and looked directly into the glass, there she was, her face beside mine, not laughing exactly, but still triumphant. Her eyes sparkled as she looked out at me. She deep-breathed as though inhaling my scent and then her tongue snaked out and licked her lips, quick as a lizard’s, so fast you might have missed seeing it at all.

  Well, I turned and ran. I ran and ran, which even as my feet skittered along the polished wood floor I knew was stupid, for she could not follow, she was trapped in the glass, her own little world. Eventually this knowledge drew me to a halt. I leaned against a door frame, panting, and gave myself a good talking to. The woman was in the mirror. She could not escape it, nor could she directly do me harm. Somehow I knew that, somehow I certained it was true.

  Gingerly I turned and made my way back along the passage. As I approached the mirror I lowered my head to avoid any conjunction of our eyes, but as I passed it I could not resist; my gaze was updrawn and met hers and in her eyes that insouciant smile. I fasted past, and found myself in the library, where I flung myself into my favourite armchair, exhausted quite by the terror of it all. And then, as I slumped there, more lying than sitting, my eye caught it, upon the wall above the mantel. Why, of course, in my half-life in this room, I had looked at it a thousand times, possibly the biggest and grandest looking glass in the house, which I had at some level, I realised now, always loved, because it contained another room identical to this one that I so adored and, at a single glance, doubled the number of books in the room.

  This time it so predictabled I did not recoil in fear. I rose from my chair and, as one who nightwalks, dreamily made my way across the room and stood before her. ‘You foul fiend, you witch,’ I said through gritted teeth, although for some reason I uncertained whether I actually spoke the words out loud or whether they remained as bridewelled inside me as she was in the glass.

  Alouded or not, she heard them or read them in my thoughts, for her lips broke into her by now familiar cruel smile and seemed, as I watched, to mouth back at me a word. ‘Giles,’ they pantomimed. ‘Giles.’

  I turned my back on her, for I would not give her the satisfaction of seeing my discomfort, the absolute terror that tiptoed my spine and threatened to burst my heart from my breast. I calmed over to the bookshelves and began taking out books as if selecting which to read, although in truth the faded gold leaf of the titles on their spines danced and jigged before my eyes and made as little sense as if the words had been writ in Sanskrit. I randomed three or four and left the room, because it too uncomfortabled me to sit and read them there.

  It was only as I made my way back to the staircase, past her little outpost on the corridor wall, that the true state of things hit me. For now I thought upon it, I realised the terrible fact: there were mirrors all over Blithe. Almost every room contained at least one, they were in nearly every passage, and, without having to look, I understood that she had peopled them all, every last one, and that wherever I went in the house, she would be watching me, for she had sentinelled the whole place, and from now on there was nowhere indoors where I could go unobserved.

  No one who has not known it (and who else but me can ever have known such a thing in this world?) can imagine what it feels like to conduct your whole life under the eyes of another. As I walked the corridors I felt her watching me; when I ate my meals there was a mirror behind me, so that Miss Taylor, who opposited me, could view me from front and back; she really did have eyes on the back of my head. She was even in the small mirror on the dressing table in my room, which in protest I turned to the wall, for I would not give her the satisfaction of watching me undress or of making me undress in the dark.

  I puzzled why Giles could not see these spies she had left behind in the mirrors; the only answer could be because she did not want him to. The last thing she would wish was to frighten him, for she needed to gain his confidence to seduce him away from Blithe. Moreover, my questioning him about them, which I did a time or two more before giving up, only served to reinforce the idea that my behaviour was strangeing, leading him further away from me and into her hungry arms. At the same time, she had made these mirror selves, these glass spies, visible to me because she wanted not only to watch me to detect any errant behaviour toward her, but for me to know I was watched and thereby deter any such rebellion at all.

  I found myself walking stiffly; my shoulders would no longer relax, my arms and legs automatonned, my face masked itself, as my body adjusted to life under this new regime, for it knew not to betray my thoughts and feelings to he
r through a movement, a reckless expression or a careless gesture. I was now still more circumscribed in my contact with Giles, because even when Miss Taylor was not present, it was hard to avoid one of her glass spies – one of her spyglasses – and being overlooked or overheard.

  After a couple of days, though, it apparented to me there was one place free from our new governess’s gaze. If, when I exited the library, I turned left, it took me back along the main corridor, with its glass halfway along, to the centre of the house, the hall, the drawing room, the kitchen. If, on the other hand I turned right, I would find myself at the foot of the west tower, my tower. There was no spyglass along the corridor here! Moreover, the staircase up to my tower room was devoid of pictures or mirrors, all presumably having been stripped off – for there were squares of lighter plaster where pictures had at some time hung – when the tower was abandoned from use. My tower room was unmirrored too, of course, for there was no wall space, it was windowed on every side. Not only that, but because Miss Taylor had never been there, even had there been a mirror, it would not have been peopled by her. Quite simply, all I had to do was walk to the western end of the corridor and sneak up to my tower and I was off her map.

  The moment I realised this I once again made an excuse about needing a book from the library and made my way to the tower, climbed up the outside of the banisters and up the rickety stairs to my tower. I captain’s-chaired me and spent a few moments wistfulling the drive, remembering the deliciousness of those carefree days, both pre-Whitaker and inter-governesses, when I had sat here reading, three-or-four-paging looks up the drive for any sign of Theo. What an age ago it all seemed now!

  But when I had nostalgiaed for a bit, I realised something else. Although I had vanished from Miss Taylor’s map, there were not many places I could have gone. The few rooms between the library and the tower might all contain mirrors, in which case my trail would end at the bottom of the tower. Now, the staircase looked unclimbable and so my disappearance might puzzle Miss Taylor for a while, but she was by no means stupid and it surely wouldn’t take long for her to figure out that there was but one place I could be, and so my last refuge would be revealed.

  It obvioused to me that the time might come when I would need such a bolthole, that at some point I might be pitched in a desperate struggle against this fiend who had come to haunt Blithe and would need a place to hide. It was important I should not fritter away the time in my tower now in mere princessing, but save it for the moment when this dire need might arise.

  With this in mind, I was about to leave the tower when I caught a movement at the end of the drive which proved to be a man upon a horse trotting toward the house. Of course, it was too far to see the visitor’s face but his stiff unyielding posture familiared to me from the early summer. Hadleigh! He had kept his promise, and sooner than I had expected. He had come! And how appropriately! As I princessed in the tower, he knight-in-shining-armoured up the drive.

  I tore down the stairs and along the corridor, bolding so much at this sudden blessing that on the way I stuck out my tongue at the spyglass there as I passed, a temptation I had been careful to unyield to hitherto. I arrived in the hall just as the captain was being admitted by Mrs Grouse.

  ‘Ah, Florence,’ he said, removing his hat and coat and handing them to Mrs Grouse, who of course knew him from the Whitaker affair. He mischiefed an eyebrow at me. ‘I happened to be passing this way and thought I would drop in on you all and see how you were getting along.’ His thespian abilities were considerably greater than my brother’s.

  ‘We do very well, thank you, sir,’ I said. ‘We have a new governess.’

  ‘Indeed? Then I should very much like to pay her my respects, if I’m not intruding.’

  Mrs Grouse dispatched Mary up to the schoolroom to fetch Giles and Miss Taylor. They were some minutes coming down, which suspicioned me she did not want to see him, for she would have spotted him through the mirror in the hall the moment he entered the house.

  ‘Are you working on any interesting cases, sir?’ I asked Hadleigh, by way of conversation while we waited.

  ‘Oh, the usual, you know. Murder, arson, armed robbery and the like. Such things never stop in a bustling place like this.’

  Mrs Grouse, deaf to irony, poor simple soul, tut-tutted. ‘Is that so, sir? Well now, who’d have thought it? I always look upon this part of the country as somewhat quiet and lacking in excitement.’

  Hadleigh meaningfulled a look at me. ‘Ah well, so it is, on the surface, ma’am, but scratch away at it a little and you find that nothing is as it seems.’

  Miss Taylor and Giles arrived. My brother hid behind her skirts, having found his several interrogations by Hadleigh in the past not to his liking. Our new governess shook hands with the captain and looked him straight in the eye, which I gladded at, for surely he must see the snake or whatever it was that lurked inside her.

  It being that time of day, she suggested he take tea with us on the lawn and we duly went out and sat there while Meg summoned up bread and butter and cakes.

  Hadleigh was, I realised, which I never had before, a clever interrogator, for he managed to ask her probing questions in the form of small talk. ‘Have you been in this employment long?’ he began, studying the distant lake as if the question were merely for politeness’s sake and he could not care less what her answer might be, indeed, might not even bother to listen to it at all.

  ‘But five weeks,’ she replied.

  He laughed. ‘You mistake me, ma’am.’ He reached for another cake, all his attention seemingly on choosing the right one. ‘I meant, have you been governessing for long?’

  ‘For longer than I care to remember,’ she said, tinkling him a polite laugh.

  He was not to be so easily rebuffed. ‘Come, come, it can’t be so bad, not with charges as delightful as Florence and Giles. Where were you before that has so jaundiced you of your profession?’

  ‘I did not mean that I do not like the work, Captain. I merely referred to not liking to think about the passage of years since I first began. No woman likes to be reminded that she is growing older.’

  ‘And you know the children’s uncle, I suppose?’

  She took a sip of her tea. ‘No, I’m afraid I’ve not yet had that pleasure. I was not employed directly by him.’

  ‘An agency, then?’

  She smiled and inclined her head slightly, as though acknowledging something shameful, which to persons of a certain class it might be, being hawked around like a labourer for hire.

  Hadleigh smacked his hand down upon his knee. ‘Then you’re the very person who can help me!’

  She doubtfulled him a look.

  ‘You see, ma’am, I have these friends in much the same station of life as the children’s uncle who are in need of a governess and could use the name of a good agency.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if the one I came through is any good,’ she replied. It was like watching two fencers at work, except that Hadleigh showed less finesse when it came to the kill. He was more like a dog shaking a rat to death.

  ‘Oh, but it found you, didn’t it, ma’am?’

  She tinkled him another one. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘Ma’am, stop being so blamed modest.’ He straighted her in the eye. ‘Just tell me the name of the agency. My friend is a man of business, he’ll soon determine whether or not they’re any good.’

  She stared at him a long minute and then told him the name of the place and its address in New York. Hadleigh thanked her with no more warmth than if she’d simply proffered him another slice of cake, but his lips pursed in a smug of satisfaction, as much, I suspected, that he had bested her as for the thing itself.

  Shortly after, Hadleigh rose and said he had to go, and asked me to walk him and his horse to the end of the drive. Soon as we aloned I asked him, ‘Well?’

  ‘If you mean, do I think she resembles the late Miss Whitaker, I wouldn’t rightly be able to say. I’ve only seen
photographs of the other woman and most of them after they fished her out of the lake.’

  I could not reply. My eyes teared at the thought of such a sight, although I had not been allowed to witness it. It was he who broke the silence. ‘When I mentioned before about grief doing strange things to people…’

  ‘It is more than that, sir.’

  He stopped and we stared at one another. I tried to plead him a look, for I had not words to change his mind if he had decided I was imagining it all. He put his foot in the stirrup and lifted his other leg over his horse and climbed into the saddle. ‘Listen, I have the name of the people your uncle used to employ her. I’ll send to New York and have some inquiries made and see what we can find out, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ I said. And with that, he spurred his horse and left me standing at the top of the drive, thinking suddenly that here at least, outside, I was unmirrored and unobserved and that no one could see me cry.

  21

  Although Hadleigh had not as yet actually done anything for me, that is, anything concrete in the way of assistance, the mere knowledge that he was, in this, at least, on my side, and that I unaloned in my quest to save Giles, was enough to buoy my spirits. Before his visit, my anxiety, the constant surveillance and the solitariness of my plight combined to freeze me quite, so that I completely helplessed and could not even think what little I might be able to do to stop the witch. Now, after I had lonelied and cried while I watched Hadleigh turn out of the drive onto the main road, I steelyresolved. I would do all I could in the way of battling this dead creature – for such I certained our new governess was, or how else could she waterwalk or inhabit mirrors? I more-or-lessed she was Whitaker returned, too, for what other revenant would want to haunt me so? Who else did I know who had died, and in my presence? Did she in some way blame me for not having saved her as I blamed myself? Was it enough to make her want to punish me by the harming or taking of the only thing I truly loved, that best part of myself, my helpless little brother? It all possibled, at least.