The Lion Tamer’s Daughter

by Peter Dickinson

  “I have to read him Queen Elizabeth again,” she said.

  “All right,” I said. “If he tells you different you scratch your nose and I’ll get myself so I can hear you, and you can ask him about it like you were making sure. And the other thing is I’ve got to get a shutter open so there’s a bit of light to see by, so you try and chat with him for a bit before you start. Got it?”

  She nodded, but not quite so dull and dismal. Mind you, I knew exactly what she’d been feeling, being in for it, and no escape, like going in through the school gate at Southampton and knowing the bullies would be there, waiting …

  I took her hand and we went down the stairs together and along the big corridor far as the library door. She knocked and waited, and turned the handle, except it didn’t move, and walked through the solid wood. I opened the door and went in and shut it behind me.

  It was pretty well dead dark inside with the shutters closed and the curtains drawn, so I had to switch on the light to open up, first pulling on the cord that worked the curtains, the way I’d seen Kitty doing, and then fiddling with the iron bar which held the shutters to. Its fastening was stiff and I thought I was going to have to try one of the others, but then I shifted it and swung the shutters open. It wasn’t as light as I’d hoped outside but I thought I could just about see to read. A few more days and I’d be needing the electric, but for now I ran back to the door and switched it off.

  By the time I was ready Adalina was standing by the chair under the dust sheet, very straight and prim, with her hands clasped behind her back. She was talking with someone, listening more than talking, just saying two or three words and trying to smile. I picked up the book from where I’d put it and leafed through for Queen Elizabeth. (She’d been the only one then, of course, but we’d got Princess Elizabeth nowadays, so it looked as if we were due to have a second one.) By the time I was ready Adalina was holding out her hand for something, and taking it, and sitting down on something that wasn’t there, except it was, like a faint, faint shadow, and now she wasn’t shifting the book around I could just about see the faint shadow of it too, where she was holding it with her head bowed down over it and her finger on the page. There was no way I could get my mouth against her ear and read from my book at the same time, so I sort of crouched behind and saw what the first few words said and then leaned forward and told her.

  “The greatest of all our queens was the Virgin Queen Elizabeth.”

  Her finger began to move along the line I couldn’t see, in little jerks as it came to each new word. I read the next bit, not giving her more than she’d remember in one go easy, and soon as her finger stopped I told her again, and that’s how we went on. It probably didn’t sound that bad at first, because that’s how kids at school read who aren’t that good at it, especially if I stopped when a word was coming up she’d have had to puzzle out. But it was tiring just crouching there, and concentrating so hard, and craning to and fro to get at her ear, and what’s more it was getting darker and darker and by the time we got to the Armada I was having trouble making the words out myself and I knew I couldn’t go on much longer, but I’d have to, the way he was keeping her at it.

  In the end all I could think of was to tell her to stop somehow.

  “You’ve got to have a fit of coughing or something,” I said. “Give me a chance to get the light turned on. I can’t see no more.”

  I didn’t think she’d manage it, not the way she’d been when we came downstairs, but she must have relaxed no end because she didn’t make a bad go of it at all, coughing and sputtering while I raced to the door for the light and then back to the window to get the curtains drawn for the blackout. I didn’t have time to bother with the shutters, so I just had to hope the curtains were enough, and Miss van Deering wouldn’t be coming along the corridor and spotting the light round the door. By the time I got back to Adalina she was standing up and being given something to drink, and then she went back to her place and settled down and we carried on as before.

  He kept her at it, too. Leafing ahead I could see we weren’t going to get through Queen Elizabeth, nothing like, by half past six. I didn’t have my own watch, of course, but there was a grandfather clock by the foot of the stairs, which had struck six not that long after we’d started, and the quarter when Sir Francis Drake was sailing out to meet the Armada, and I knew it must be pretty close on half past before he let her stop.

  Adalina knew too. She jumped up and handed her book over and gave a quick pecking kiss to the bit of air over the chair and didn’t quite run to the door, where she turned and did a neat little curtsey and shot off through the door. I wasn’t that far behind her. I’d no time to deal with the shutters but I switched off the light as I went and closed the door and ran up the stairs behind her. We got her through the nursery door and she was standing there being lectured at by this Miss Tarrant I couldn’t see when the clock along the passage struck the half past.

  It must have been about the same her time too because she didn’t get slung in the cupboard but went and sat on the bed and started undressing. Neat little embroidered slippers she was wearing this evening, and as she took them off they went shadowy in her hand and disappeared when she let go of them, and the same with her jacket when she slipped out of it and put it on the bed beside her. The bed was there too, very faint and shadowy, now she was sitting on it. I’d left the door open and the light I’d kept on in the passage shone across her, and this was the first time I’d seen anything like this happening where I could really see it, so I suppose I must have been staring a bit when she gave me a sort of glance and frown, and I came to and got it that she didn’t want me standing there watching her undressing. I wasn’t interested in that, the way some boys might have been, so I went back down to the library and did the shutters and checked that I hadn’t left anything where it oughtn’t to be. Then I went down to the kitchen, getting through onto the back stairs by a little door Kitty’d shown me under the main stair, which was disguised as a bookcase so the gentry wouldn’t need to notice there were a pack of servants in the house along with them doing their dirty stuff for them. My grandmother had the wireless on in the kitchen, so she didn’t hear me slip past and put Kings and Queens in among the books in the servants’ hall before I went in.

  “Reading in the dark, then?” she said sharply.

  “I had to go to the toilet,” I told her.

  “Don’t tell me you’re bunged up,” she said, good as reaching for the Syrup of Figs already.

  “No, I’m all right,” I said quickly.

  “Good boys go after breakfast,” she said.

  “Shall I get the cards?” I said.

  “Time for a couple of hands, I suppose, provided Your Lordship’s willing,” she said.

  8. The Man in the Chair Again

  Next evening went much the same, only I left the light on in the library and didn’t bother with the shutters, and Adalina was nothing like that upset and nervous, and I could see she was talking a bit easier to her dad before she started reading, and she was doing that easier too, and sometimes carrying on beyond the bit I’d read to her, which I could tell from where her finger’d got to on the line. We finished Queen Elizabeth that go and he talked to her a bit more and let her off in plenty of time to get up to the nursery. My grandmother was sharpish with me again when I came back down, but I was used to that.

  Next day Adalina had off, because it was Sunday, she’d told me, and her dad would be doing something else. And besides, Miss Tarrant had her day out and she’d be in Worcester meeting with Mr. Silvey on the sly. It was only Friday, my time, so I told my grandmother I’d do some more copying Saturday and Sunday and we’d have a good long time for crib that evening. Even so I went off and read for a bit on the toilet, so as to keep her thinking that’s where I went that time of the evening.

  Saturday, which was Monday in Adalina’s time, went all right, and Sunday too, but Monday evening—you’ve got to remember that when I wasn’t actually s
peaking the words into Adalina’s ear, and provided there wasn’t a wind to rattle the windows, the library was dead silent, silent as an empty church—I fancied I heard someone coming along the passage outside and stopping at the library door. I froze. A couple of evenings before I’d tried leaving the light on and shutting the door with me outside, to see how much light came through, and it wasn’t much but all the same you couldn’t really miss it. If there was anyone out there now it could only be Miss van Deering. Like I say, I froze, and I didn’t come to till Adalina jogged me with her elbow to carry on, which I did, and if there was anyone there they must have moved on while I was still telling her what came next. Anyway no one came in, so I supposed I must have been fancying it.

  Adalina asked me about it going up the stairs.

  “I thought somebody was coming in,” I told her. “I’m not supposed to be there, and I’d be in dead trouble if they found me.”

  She didn’t say anything, but I could see that really bothered her. She didn’t want me getting into trouble but she knew she couldn’t do without me. I ought to have told her then I didn’t know how long I’d be able to carry on this way, because I’d told my grandmother it was just the ten days I’d need to finish the copying I was supposed to be doing, but I hadn’t the heart.

  It was two evenings later it happened. I’d done the dishes and told my grandmother I was going up to get on with the copying and I’d be down in a bit for crib, and I slipped along to the servants’ hall to pick up Kings and Queens. She’d given me one of her looks as I left, but that wasn’t anything unusual, so I just wasn’t ready when she whipped out and grabbed me just as I was sneaking past the kitchen door. She must have been ready and waiting for me, just inside. She snatched the book out of my hand and took hold of me by the ear and ran me back into the kitchen. Like I’ve said, she’d a short temper and I was used to her blowing up, but I’d never seen her that furious.

  “Well, who’s a wicked little liar?” she said. “Making out he’s got copying to do, and sneaking off to read his book instead of playing crib with his old grandmother who’s always done her best for him? And a thief with it, stealing candles to read by. You know what happens to thieves? Prison is what happens to them. And don’t come that with me …”

  I couldn’t have said anything even if she’d given me the chance, but I’d been shaking my head to tell her I hadn’t been stealing candles.

  “… Don’t come that with me. Ran into Mrs. Corcoran in the post office, didn’t I, and told her I’d a bone to pick with you about all this copying she’d set you to do, and it was the first she’d heard of it, she said …”

  She went on at me like that for an ungrateful liar I don’t know how long, but in the end she packed me straight off to bed. Not thinking about it, and still not saying anything because I couldn’t, I held out my hands begging her to give me back Kings and Queens, but she snatched it away and put it on the shelf with her cooking books.

  “Not on your life,” she said. “And what’s more no more books for you, not another page, until I give you the say-so. Now be gone with you!”

  Adalina was waiting for me just up beyond the red baize door. It was never any problem, not for either of us, coming down past that bit, because we were coming out of the cave and we could see there wasn’t anything there. These last few days she’d not been creeping and staring either. Almost perky she’d been too, about going down and reading to her dad, like it was something she was looking forward to, and not getting jumpy again unless it looked like she might be getting back up to the nursery late.

  She smiled her pursy little smile at me and put her hand in mine to carry on down to the library. We hadn’t been bothering with hellos and such because of the nuisance of switching our heads to and fro to hear what the other one was saying, so she looked puzzled when I didn’t smile back and then put my mouth against her ear.

  “I haven’t got Kings and Queens,” I told her. “She found out what was up and took it off of me.”

  She got it at once. Maybe she was the kind that keeps telling themselves, soon as things are going right for them, it means something nasty’s going to happen just because of that. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open and she did her hunching thing and just stood there, stupid, shaking her head.

  “You can do it,” I told. “You really can. You’ve been reading pretty good, getting ahead of me sometimes. Look, why don’t you tell him you’ve got a headache? Or about Miss Tarrant. You’ve got to tell him about Miss Tarrant one day, and you might as well get it over. Ah, come on, Adalina!”

  It wasn’t any good. She just stood there shaking her head and digging herself deeper and deeper into the hole she was in until there was no way she could climb back out of it, not ever. (I’d been there too, remember, back in Southampton.) In the end all I could do was grab hold of her hand and pretty well pull her down to the library.

  I had to put her hand on the door handle, but then she pulled herself together and knocked and waited and went through. I followed her and switched on the light, not that it was going to be any use, me seeing what happened, and then I went and stood beside her with my hand on her shoulder, so she’d know I was there, but careful not to let her dad spot there was anything different. She was doing her best, smiling—just—and not crying—just—and you’d have thought anybody would have seen there was something wrong, something bothering her badly. Maybe he asked, because at one place she shook her head and said a few words and tossed her pigtails back and tried to smile a bit more.

  Then she took the book and it became shadowy in her hands, and sat on the stool and made that come shadowy too and began trying to read. It was awful. I could see her stammering, and making a word out, and trying again, and getting it wrong again, with her finger hardly moving along the page at all. Then she’d reach out and hand the book over and take it back—he’d been telling her the word she was stuck at, I guessed—and struggle along a bit more.

  On and on it went like that. I wanted to go away, pretend it wasn’t happening. Not that it was as bad for me as it was for her, anything like, but I got close to screaming at there being nothing I could do to help, nothing at all. She never seemed to notice I’d got my hand on her shoulder. You’d not have known it to look at her, but when she got badly stuck her whole body set up juddering, like a lorry that’s standing in the road, not moving along but with its engine running. I tried stroking her when that started but it wasn’t any use. The clocks outside struck six, and getting on an hour later, it felt like, they struck the quarter, and he didn’t let her go and he didn’t let her go and she had to sit there hunched and juddering and trying to read and trying not to cry, on and on, till the clocks struck the half past.

  Maybe he heard it too, because now she passed the book across and stood up and waited, listening and nodding her head and trying to smile and fidgeting with one of her pigtails. I went over to the door and waited till she came walking slowly across with her head up, proud, and turned and did her curtsey and walked through, never even looking at me.

  I switched off the light and slipped out, and she was already running along to the main stair, not stopping for me, though she must have known it was no use and she’d be shut in the cupboard for sure. She went skimming up the main stair with me after and I only caught her up just as she was reaching the top. I tried to take her hand, tell her I was coming with her to the nursery, though what sort of trouble I’d be in with my grandmother if I didn’t show up in the kitchen soon I don’t know, but she spun round and said something I couldn’t hear, with her face all set white and hard like a statue, and before she’d finished speaking she put out both hands and gave me a shove in the chest. I wasn’t ready for it, and it sent me tumbling back down the stairs. I could have hurt myself really bad on that marble, but I must have been lucky how I fell, half against the rail, which I managed to grab hold of and stopped myself falling any further.

  Soon as I’d got myself together I went tearing after her. She was
almost up the top stairs when I reached the bottom of them, but I went up them two at a time, and left at the top, the other way from the nursery, switching on the lights when I came to them. That slowed me, and she was out of sight by the time I got to the next corner, but I knew where she was heading and went belting on round the next corner to the linen room. There wasn’t any bulb in there, but there wasn’t any blackout either, and I could see her against the window trying to get it open. She didn’t hear me coming, of course, and the first she knew was when I grabbed her round the shoulders and dragged her clear. She tried to pull away but I hung on and put my mouth against her ear and said, “No you don’t. Not yet.”

  She went on trying to pull away and get my mouth off her ear but I managed to get hold of one of her pigtails and held her head still and said, gasping after all that running, “Listen. I’ve thought of something. I don’t know if it’ll work but it’s worth a try. Please, Adalina, give it a go. Please. But we’ve got to be quick. Now, at once. Oh, come on! You owe it me, you really do. I’ve stuck by you when I didn’t need to, because I could see you were in trouble, and now I’ve gone and got myself in real bad trouble for you, and you owe it me. Yes, you do, and it’s no use making out you don’t, because you know it’s so. You owe it me.”

  She’d been all rigid and juddering when I’d got to her, and she didn’t go soft now, not exactly, but she eased a bit and the juddering stopped and when I let go of her pigtail she put her mouth to my ear and whispered, “All right. But next time …”

  “Next time you can do whatever you’ve a fancy to,” I told her, “because I don’t expect I’m going to be allowed to be here no more.”

  So we went out into the passage where I could see her, and I gave her a smile to show her it was all going to come out all right, though I knew in my heart it was a desperate long shot, and at least it would get her away from that window. She couldn’t go jumping out of there, not if she was shut in a cupboard. She didn’t smile back, but she let me hang on to her hand and take her back round to the nursery.