Finding myself alone in the otherwise empty school-room one afternoon, the children at that moment engaged in lessons with visiting masters (Andrew enjoys private tutoring in boxing, organ, flute, Latin, chess, Management and Investment Opportunities, and Drusilla has harp lessons twice a week), I search for more clues on Drusilla’s desk but find nothing.
Frustrated, or relieved, or both, I tug on the tapestry bell-pull, and upon Miss Lamb’s hasty arrival, ask her for a glass of warm milk.
Miss Lamb’s steps thump dully across the drugget as she brings the glass of milk to me on a tray, her fingernails chiming upon the crystal as she sets it down on the desk. She smiles at me, and I smile back, all my preoccupations dwindling, my Darkness wet and unfolding between my legs. I have barely lifted the glass, the weight of it causing my wrist to swerve slightly, before I stand up.
Miss Lamb, on her way to the door, hears the scraping chair and turns to look at me, fearful of admonishment.
I approach her, thanking her for the milk. Her nose and tops of her ears are pink, and her smile full of skin is pink.
I have always liked pretty things. When Mother and the Reverend came across all the unburied baby corpses in my bed-room, arranged neatly on the one shelf along with an old borrowed copy of Gulliver’s Travels, they thought they were dolls, at first.
The Reverend prayed at me, his eyes bulging, the whites yellowed. (He would at times attempt to exorcise me. Sprinkling water at me, droplets trickling into my eyes and nasal cavities.
‘Good, now, I am cured.’
‘Dost thou speak the truth?’
‘Aye.’)
I did not tell them about the other one. The woman. Left outside for days, birds pecking at her hair. Her thumb made its way down a hungry fox’s intestinal tract, the bone out its anus – so said some hunters who found it.
She was too big for the shelf.
‘How are the lad and lass getting along?’ Miss Lamb asks. ‘Are they very rude and boisterous?’
‘They are indeed,’ I say – then, leaning in conspiratorially: ‘But so am I.’
Miss Lamb studies my face, her mouth agape, before it stretches wide to accommodate her hearty laughter. ‘Eh! Miss Notty!’ she says between giggles, ‘Tha’ art a queer old thing!’
I laugh, lean over, and take into my mouth one of her earlobes.
Miss Lamb drops the tray to the floor and stumbles, reaching a hand to her ear and gasping. ‘Deviant!’ she cries. ‘Deviant!’ And I observe in her an unfurling loathing that awakens my own.
I look into her widened eyes – her irises so thick and blue they disgust me – waiting for her soul to beckon to me as it did before, but soul and eyes are unfamiliar, now; I cannot distinguish them from all the others I’ve met before.
‘Now, now, it was but a joke, Miss Lamb,’ I say firmly, ‘nothing to get so vexed over –’
‘It’s true, what they say about thee! I never knew if it were in jest or in earnest, but I see now how wrong I was to trust thee!’
How unrefined and infantile her mind, how populated and messy her eyebrows!
‘What who says about me?’ I ask.
‘Mrs Able says tha’ reads books backwards. Back to front.’
‘Hardly a punishable offense –’
‘The scullery maid says she’s seen thee squattin’ over the swans at dawn, naked!’
I’ll admit that is a difficult one to explain.
Miss Lamb takes a step back. ‘I will tell Mr Pounds all about thy perversions!’ she cries. ‘He’ll never love thee now!’
A deluge of wrath unleashes in waves through my body, making it shiver. I snort, a beast about to charge, a film of sweat drooling out of my pores, and in one rapid motion I smash the glass in my hand against the children’s globe – milk dripping down Europe – and stab Miss Lamb in the neck with the shard in my hand.
‘Ah,’ Miss Lamb says.
When I pull the glass out, crimson blood patters the plain brown drugget like pearls dropping from a broken necklace.
Miss Lamb crumples to the floor, attempting to press on the wound, but her arms appear to have lost mobility, as she can only manage to pat clumsily at her collar-bone. She is acquiescent to the last – a rather silent sort of die-er – while the blood pours from her throat.
Footsteps creak on the floorboards in the corridor outside. I look down at the mess. The footsteps grow progressively louder. I take Miss Lamb’s arms and slide her behind a desk.
Mrs Pounds enters the room, mid-sentence, complaining about Drusilla’s posture, about how I must fix it before the guests arrive for Christmas. Ignoring the fact that I’m on all fours behind a desk, she paces around the room as she goes on about the limitations of the marriage pool these days. When she gets close, I wipe my hands on the hem of her frock.
‘So you understand what I’m telling you, don’t you?’ she asks, oblivious. ‘Do stand when I’m speaking to you.’
I get up to face her, stumbling over Miss Lamb’s boots, which sway on impact from their very visible position protruding from behind the desk. ‘Yes, Mrs Pounds,’ I say. ‘Whatever you – what you’re saying, it shall be done.’
‘Good. I won’t tell you again.’
‘You will not,’ I concur, but she’s not listening, has already left the room, leaving a haze of thyme-scented hair and high standards in her wake.
Dazed, I turn to examine the body behind the desk. Mr Dickens described his dead Little Nell as beautiful and serene; so fair to look upon. Gone were the traces of her sufferings and fatigues, replaced with a ‘tranquil beauty and profound repose’. I look down at Miss Lamb. Eyes half-slitted and crossed, skin pumice-hued; her face like kneaded flour, smudged with my chalky fingerprints; jaw twisted – the tongue protruding as if she’d choked on it. Her uniform is soiled. Certainly no Little Nell. I wonder how I could have been so misguided as to covet her.
There is a red spatter on the tapestry bell-pull, although the fabric features a pattern of cherry pickers. I’ve often found that blood and fruit are not immediately distinguishable from one another.
Pausing at the door, I listen for any passers-by. This side of the house is usually quiet at this hour. The chambermaids will be cleaning the unoccupied bed-rooms upstairs. I calculate the probability of reaching the secret garret unseen. I reason it will have to be done sooner or later; I cannot stay in this doorframe for ever. It is ridiculous, of course, and unfathomable that I will get away with this – and also, inexplicably, there is the beginning of hunger in the pit of my stomach, a sudden yearning for the cook’s slightly cold, undercooked potatoes – however, I have subjected myself to such gloomy thoughts before, and no negative outcome has ever transpired. Perhaps I am confusing remembrances for dreams. I might be dreaming now. Everyone is free to do as they choose, in dreams.
I decide to allow destiny to decide. I very much enjoy subscribing to this train of thought, for it releases the subject from any consequence.
With difficulty – slamming her head against the skirting board – I slide the corpse of Miss Lamb through the long gallery, trailing a thick trail of blood.
The dog follows, licking the floor clean.