Dead Ends
Page 11
Molly read my thoughts. “You’d be surprised how many travelers think this is some kind of hotel or public house. They just open the front door and let themselves in.”
It seemed a poor explanation. Were we in some kind of misplaced Tudor fortress? And if so, what were we guarding against?
Theresa was delighted with her surprisingly sunny bedroom, which was papered with enormous bouquets of tulips and jonquils, and immediately ran to the cushioned seat beneath the window to look outside. When she had calmed down a bit, I opened her trunk, and helped her change out of her traveling boots.
“I’ll come back and unpack your things in a few minutes,” I said.
“I can do it myself. It’s my own new room!”
When Molly suggested that it was good for Theresa to get used to her surroundings, I looked around the cheerful room. There was a small student’s desk, and a wardrobe with a step beside it that she could use to reach the rack inside. Several new-looking dolls rested against the bed pillows. It was perfect.
“All right. I’ll come back in an hour. Have fun.” I kissed her cheek, and she ran to open the wardrobe to get started.
As I followed Molly through the broad hallways to my own room, she pointed out the other bedrooms and told me a little about the paintings lining the walls. There were a number of moody European landscapes in blues and golds and greens, but most were portraits of past Trewloves: forbidding, older women in fashionable dresses of the past two centuries. It wasn’t until we reached my room that I silently noted the absence of any men in the portraits.
“Believe me, you’ll be happy to be in the middle of the house, away from the girls,” Molly said, opening the door to a spacious room that was, indeed, done in contrasting shades of blue. “When they get to playing nonsense, they drive a body to distraction.” I wondered just how active my new charge would be. And what if Lilith and Theresa didn’t get along? It was a question that had already caused me many hours’ worry.
When Molly was gone, I stood at the window, rather stunned to finally be alone. From there, the front gardens didn’t look quite so vast, but rather like a quaint private park.
Now I could see how the stone animals stood out in a kind of pattern, arranged like spokes in a wheel. And at their center, surrounded by tall blue irises, was the statue of a girl sculpted in creamy marble, strung through with seams of ochre. Her delicate face was lifted to stare at the house, and I couldn’t help but think how lonely she looked there, all alone.
I opened my eyes in twilight, my cheek pressed against a deep velvet-covered pillow. If the sound of giggling hadn’t awakened me, who knows how long I might have slept? Remembering where I was, my heart quickened. I’d only meant to rest my eyes for a few moments before unpacking my trunk.
Where was Theresa? If the giggling was any indication, she was out in the hallway, and not in the room where I’d left her. I went to the door. More soft laughter, and whispering. I turned the key, but opened the door to receding, running footsteps and more laughter. In the dim light of the hallway, I saw a swath of blue linen and the heel of a black patent leather shoe disappear into the next doorway.
“Theresa!” Something about the quiet of the hall kept me from raising my voice above a loud whisper. I waited another moment and called her again.
“Here we are.” Theresa was the first to emerge from the room beside mine, but it was the smaller girl behind her who spoke. “Is Theresa in trouble? Have we done something wrong?”
This could only be my student, Lilith. Even in the scarce light I could see the intelligence her grandmother had written of in her dark eyes, “a wisdom beyond her years.” I hadn’t expected it to be true. In the two years since I’d certified as a teacher, I’d heard too many mothers and grandmothers rhapsodize about perfectly stupid little girls as though they were the next Madame Curie. But as wise as she looked, Lilith was still a young girl, not quite eight years old, and two inches shorter than my Theresa. Her black hair was cropped short in a fashionable bob, just like that of nearly every other little girl her age, and her dress and stockings were as spotless as her gleaming shoes. There was one more thing: Lilith was quite the most beautiful child I had ever seen. Her features were perfectly even, her nose and lips finely drawn, but still childish. And her skin was like the fairest part of luminous mother-of-pearl.
Feeling like a traitor to have thought another child more beautiful than my own, I looked more closely at Lilith for some flaw, some excuse to think less of her appearance. All I found were hints of hunger and need in her appealing eyes. But those weren’t really flaws, were they? No one could fault a child for being hungry for affection—especially a lonely child living out in the country with her grandmother.
“Mama?” Theresa’s voice was anxious, and I drew my gaze from Lilith’s face to hers. “Did we wake you?”
Unsettled, realizing I’d been staring at Lilith, I stammered out, “I-I didn’t mean to sleep.”
“Mary always sleeps in the afternoon because she’s as old as that big beech tree in the woods. She thinks I need to nap, too. But I never do.” Lilith reached for Theresa’s hand, and looked up at her adoringly. “Now that you’re here, Theresa, I shan’t have to take a nap!”
It was a cheeky thing to say in front of another adult—particularly one who was going to have charge over her, but I didn’t correct her. How spoiled a child was she? And how shocking it was that she should refer to her grandmother, Mary Trewlove, by her Christian name.
“Is your grandmother downstairs?”
“Oh, she’ll be down when Molly rings the dinner bell at seven-thirty. She never comes down between lunch and dinner. We have to get dressed up. Mary is very particular about sitting at table.” With that, she tugged at Theresa’s hand. “Let’s go.” Theresa gave me a guilty, excited glance, and let Lilith lead her down the hall.
I went to my nicely fitted bathroom to splash water on my face, and then changed into one of the two dinner dresses I owned. Outside the window, evening was falling quickly. I checked my appearance in the veined and murky vanity mirror and carefully re-pinned my low bun. No modern bob for me. But what did it matter how I looked? I only needed to be presentable to a company of women and girls.
On the playful jingling of Molly’s silver bell, we gathered in the medieval dining room. Two electric lamps were lit in the nearest corners, but most of the shadowy light came from two floor candelabras and a row of candles on the table. Our introductions were brief, but I was glad to see that on meeting Theresa, Mary Trewlove’s haggard features broke into a look of pure pleasure. It was unusual for a tutor to bring a child along to a family position, and I’d been worried how Theresa would be received.
From the strength of her neat handwriting on the letters we exchanged, I had supposed Mary Trewlove to be in her fifties. But the hunched curves of her spine and shoulders, and the dullness of her cataract-glazed eyes told me she was certainly in her late seventies or eighties. She had obviously once been a handsome woman, but the years had given her sagging jowls and made her slightly hooked nose prominent in her thin face. Her gauzy vanilla dress did no favors for her jaundiced skin, rheumy eyes, and wispy white, close-trimmed hair. Both the dress and hairstyle were far too modern and youthful for her, but it was the jaundice that most concerned me. My father had been a doctor, and I suspected that Mary Trewlove was suffering some advanced form of liver disease.
Dear God, what if she dies soon? What will happen to us then? It would mean another difficult search for work. We had no family to return to, and we couldn’t survive on my meager widow’s pension. I had been lucky that a former colleague of my late father’s had told me of this position.
“Will you start your classes tomorrow?” Mary Trewlove asked.
Molly stood at her left, holding a china tureen in the shape of a turtle, so that Mrs. Trewlove could ladle the soup into her own bowl.
“It’s turtle soup!” said Lilith, interrupting my answer. “We have it every Sunday, Monday an
d Tuesday. That lazy Jerome only catches turtles on Saturday. I wish we could have it every night.” Mrs. Trewlove said nothing, gave the child no admonishment.
Obviously, the old woman was too indulgent. I glanced at Theresa, who looked appropriately chagrined at Lilith’s outburst, and vowed silently that she would not be corrupted.
“You do like turtle soup, don’t you?” Lilith inclined her head toward Theresa, who she had insisted sit beside her.
Theresa hesitated, and looked back at me. I nodded. “I’m sure I will,” she said.
Such a good girl, my Theresa.
“Jerome only catches those big old snappers that bite.” Lilith smacked her hands together. Mrs. Trewlove flinched. “Not the cute little painted turtles. He’s not allowed to catch those.”
We were quiet while Molly took the tureen around the table. I noticed that Theresa only took one small ladle of the thick soup.
Determined to take back the conversation from the children, I told Mrs. Trewlove that we would begin classes at 9:00 a.m., and that I hoped she and Lilith could show us the schoolroom after dinner.
Lilith didn’t answer but, with no small amount of drama, loudly slurped her soup from her spoon and closed her eyes, savoring it.
“That won’t do, I’m afraid.” Mary Trewlove put down her spoon. “We never start lessons until after 11:00 a.m. Children need their sleep, and Lilith requires more than average.”
“Perhaps an earlier bedtime, then,” I suggested. Lilith paused in lifting the spoon to her mouth, but then continued, slurping even louder.
Mary Trewlove gave me a vague smile. “We’re very set in our habits, I’m afraid, Mrs. Ross. Please understand. I’m sure you and Theresa will adjust nicely. It’s a very civilized schedule.” She turned to Theresa, dismissing me. “How is your soup, dear? Do you find it agreeable?”
Theresa nodded. “It’s delicious.” I knew she was lying, but I doubted that anyone else would guess.
An 11:00 a.m. beginning to the school day was a ridiculous proposition. Laziness in children should not be encouraged, and I was beginning to get the idea that not only was Lilith lazy, but she was also spoiled and demanding.
After dinner—roasted potatoes, a standing beef roast with brown gravy, and Floating Island for dessert—Mary Trewlove, pleading a headache, said she would retire to her bedroom. She told Lilith to show us the schoolroom, and encouraged me to explore the house and gardens in the morning, but to stay out of the walled garden behind the yews because the entryway was crumbling and Jerome had blocked it with a sawhorse. “No doubt he’ll get around to repairing it within the year.” She gave me a wry, knowing look that said Jerome was unreliable with his estimates.
Lilith stood on tiptoe to give her grandmother an affectionate kiss on the cheek.
“Rest well, dearest,” she said. Despite her spoiled behavior, she still looked like an angel. “We have to plan for my birthday on Saturday. You know we have so many things to do. You must feel better.”
Watching Mary Trewlove make her halting way up the front staircase, I wondered what she did with herself all day in her room. Dying, came the unbidden answer.
At eight in the morning, I half-awoke to the ringing of the small alarm clock I’d packed in my trunk, but, strangely weary, I fell back asleep. When I awoke again, it was almost nine o’clock. Just a month earlier, I would’ve already been in my classroom, faced with two dozen girls and boys who would rather have been outdoors or in their own beds than listening to me.
After hurrying through the long hallways to wake Theresa, I found her bed empty. But when I listened at Lilith’s door, I heard the girls talking and laughing. I knocked lightly before opening it. The only open window shade in the room cast a rectangle of sunlight on the enormous four-poster bed where the girls, in their nightdresses, sat playing with dolls. Otherwise the room had a gloomy aspect. It was not the sunny boudoir of a spoiled child that I expected, and was far less cheerful than Theresa’s room. Lilith’s might have been the bedroom of an old, wealthy spinster who was overly fond of dolls. For dolls of all sorts and sizes covered nearly every available surface, crowding close and tilting eagerly forward like a Lilliputian army at the ready.
“Time to dress and have breakfast, girls. We begin class directly at eleven.”
Theresa answered with a prompt, “Yes, Mother.” But Lilith only gave a faint nod and went back to her dolls.
I closed the door feeling unsettled. What a strange child Lilith was.
After a light breakfast in the dining room—an egg with toast and a small bowl of canned peaches—I made sure all was ready in the schoolroom in the east wing, then set off to explore the grounds.
The grass was damp with dew, and even the leaves on the freshly leafed trees looked glossy and wet. In the distant pasture, the Percherons stood at the fence, solemn and motionless, except for the flicking of their ears and massive tails. I thought about approaching them, but then noticed the obtuse Jerome near the stable door. I doubted the truth of his claim that the horses would injure someone, but didn’t want to test the man.
I can’t say that I was terribly unhappy in that moment. It was a pleasure to be so far from the city. We were even three or four miles out of tiny Carystown. Because I was so distracted and overcome by the unfamiliarity of the place, I hadn’t yet begun to miss the few friends we’d left behind. Everything was new and strange. Uncertain, yet not unpleasant. But even as I heard the faint chimes of the closest church mark the ten o’clock hour, I still felt we had somehow been lifted out of time the moment the car started up the winding drive to Trewlove Hall.
Thinking I might find my way back in through the kitchen, I skirted the west end of the house—the end where the woods seemed to be slowly encroaching. At the far corner of the building, I came upon a dense row of yews running along the edge of the woods. The yews were over twenty feet tall, and packed so tightly together they seemed an impenetrable wall. Just beyond, a few oaks and beeches towered above them, but they looked old and sickly. Perhaps the yews were stealing all their water? In the distance, I saw the decrepit sawhorse marking the crumbling entry to the old garden, but I could see nothing of the garden wall.
I confess I was curious about the walled garden, and imagined it to be very mysterious, but told myself there would be plenty of mornings for exploring. Perhaps there was even another way inside. But right then I was anxious to make sure the girls were dressed and breakfasted and ready for lessons.
Before I could walk even a dozen feet, I heard an alarming rustling sound from the hedge. For some reason, my mind immediately went to bears. I knew there were still a few black bears up in Ohio. Surely there were some here, as well.
The rustling was followed by a woman’s anguished voice. “Let go, let go of me!” I took a hesitant step back, uncertain whether to run away or assist whoever was coming.
A moment later, the woman broke through the hedge, alone, her eyes squeezed protectively shut as she fought the dense branches. Her face was broad and homely, and her ragged hair stuck out at all angles. Her cheeks and half-bare arms were scratched and lightly bloodied, and her shabby gray dress and yellow cloak were snagged and looked as though they hadn’t been washed in weeks. When she opened her eyes and finally noticed me, she fell back a step, shocked into silence. But then she rushed forward, grabbing me by the arms.
“What did you do to her? I want her back!” She tried to shake me, but her skeletal hands were weak, and I stood my ground. “Why won’t you give her back to me?” Her words came at me with a gust of foul breath.
She was mad, but I didn’t fear for my life. Surely she was the woman I’d seen running through the woods the day before, and she obviously needed help.
“Come with me. Come inside the house.” I tried to sound comforting. “I’ll get you some food. Some water.” Her lips were cracked and showed signs of bleeding. “You must be terribly thirsty.”
Finally she broke away, cowering as though afraid I might strike her.
“Wait!” I ran after her, but she was too quick. Her feet were bare and gripped the ground firmly, as though she actually were an animal. My own shoes were unsure on the slick grass, and I nearly fell more than once. “Let me help you!” I cried. She veered into the woods and disappeared.
“Surely someone can catch her. Have the police done nothing?” I looked up at Molly from my seat at the kitchen table. “What about her family?”
Molly put a steaming cup of milky tea on a saucer in front of me, and stirred a mounded spoonful of sugar into it. I hadn’t asked for milk or sugar, but was too flustered to complain. “She started banging on our front door a few weeks ago, raving about her daughter being missing. These beggars. They don’t last long around here. She’ll move on.”
The tea was just the right temperature, and I welcomed the sweetness. “She’s obviously mad. The authorities should take her to a hospital or asylum. And what if she really does have a daughter? She could be out there as well.” I could only think of Theresa being lost in the woods—hungry, cold, and alone.
When Lilith and Theresa came running in from the dining room a few minutes later, we closed the subject immediately. My attention was quickly drawn to Theresa, and the clothes she was wearing.
“Where did you get that dress?” I stared at the navy-blue sailor dress, with its broad collar and scarlet tie. The dress hung loose on her thin frame, making her look thinner and more fragile than usual.