The following morning, sitting on the wooden privy seat, I wipe myself with ‘The Death Notice of One Mrs Longfellow’, whose dress caught fire as she made wax seals for the entertainment of her children. Her husband, Professor Longfellow, rushed to her aid and succeeded in extinguishing her with considerable – one might even say more-deserving-of-attention than the corpse – injury to himself. She was consumed within seconds.
As I close the privy door on my way out, frost shudders off the hinges. My knees shake faintly under my flannel petticoats. The days are growing colder. Coal fires and charcoal braziers do little to warm the great halls of Ensor House, and the members of the Pounds family wrap themselves in lambswool blankets and fur shawls to cross from one room to another. ‘Coming,’ Mrs Pounds bellows from the drawing-room before a servant opens the door. ‘Going,’ shouts Mr Pounds as he springs from the library to avoid her.
Upon my return to the house, I am cornered by Mrs Pounds at the top of the staircase. The children are to take the day off from their studies following Andrew’s accident. The house has fallen strangely quiet, as if sulking after a rebuke. The servants are to wear list slippers upstairs so as to not disturb the little heir as he lies in bed and directs the nurse to spoon mushy fig pudding into his mouth.
‘In light of recent events, and well, ever since you arrived, frankly,’ Mrs Pounds begins, ‘you have made it exceedingly clear that you are not suited for this post.’
I blink, the Darkness inside my chest like a bat’s rubber thumb hooking onto my organs, accelerating my heartbeat. I swat at a fly. There is no fly.
‘However . . .’ Mrs Pounds raises her hand from the banister and examines her nails. ‘It has come to my attention that we will be requiring your presence over the Christmas holiday.’
Anxious about Drusilla’s exposure to her genteel acquaintances, and the child’s thus far unremarkable progress in this endeavour, Mrs Pounds charges me with overseeing the girl during evening meals with guests. ‘It’s quite an honour,’ she says defensively, as if I had protested, ‘to be sat at our table as a guest. Although after the Christmas holiday, your services will no longer be required. A timely notice should give you ample time to secure a new post for the New Year.’
I blink uncontrollably now, my eyes falling upon a slightly displaced stair-rod a few steps below Mrs Pounds. I must not. This shan’t be like other times (pincers blood braids limbs veins loneliness). ‘I will stay,’ I say.
Mrs Pounds looks at me with a slightly curled mouth. ‘Yes, of course you will,’ she says, her cadence stiffened, as if the mere notion of this being a request is in repugnantly bad taste.
IN MY BED-ROOM, I sit on the bed, staring at the walls.
From my trunk, I take out my father’s letters, the ones Mother kept hidden. I pore over them, although I know them by heart. The shrinking handwriting towards the bottom as he ran out of space, sentences curling up and down the margins. The words entreating Mother to kill their illegitimate child – me – to dunk her into the river, into a baptismal font, to hold her down, and wait. The signature, underlined repeatedly with a virulent coil, like a tornado. The boar crest reproduced at the top in gold leaf. The red ink has rusted over time in the nature of blood. Do not contact me again, the letters say. I will kill you. I will kill her. Kill her, they say, over and over and over.
I unroll a straight razor, wrapped in one of the letters, which belonged to my father, stolen by Mother before they parted. It seems fitting that Mother would select so menacing a remembrance of him. The razor possesses a horn-scales handle inlaid with flower pins which I press incessantly with my thumb.
I inhale the old letters, yearning for a discernible fragrance. I lick them. Lick my father’s blood.