He was sitting on the edge of his bed reading and as he still did not find reading easy, although he loved what he discovered in a book when he found the key to it, he had to concentrate hard and so he did not hear the footsteps on the last flights of uncarpeted stairs or their voices. He read on and one set of footsteps went away again and it was quiet, late afternoon. It had stopped raining, the wind had dropped and there was an uncertain sun on the watery fens.
And then he was aware of her, standing just inside the doorway, and looked up with a start.
‘You seem to be very easily frightened,’ she said.
Edward stared at the girl. She had dark red hair, long and standing out from her head as if she had an electric shock running through her, and dark blue eyes in a china white face.
‘I’m not frightened at all.’
She smiled a small superior smile and came right into the room to stand a yard or two away from him.
He slid off the bed, remembering manners he had been taught almost from the cradle, and put out his hand.
‘I am Edward Cayley,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re my cousin Leonora.’
She looked at the hand but did not take it.
‘How do you do?’
She smiled again, then turned abruptly and went to the window.
‘This is a dreadful place,’ she said. ‘What are we supposed to do?’
‘It isn’t actually terrible. It is quiet though.’
‘Who is that woman?’
‘Our aunt. Aunt Kestrel.’
Leonora tossed her hair. ‘The other one, with the sour face.’
He smiled. ‘Mrs Mullen.’
‘She doesn’t like us.’
‘Doesn’t she?’
‘Don’t be stupid, can’t you tell? But what does it matter?’ She looked round his room, summing its contents up quickly, then sat down on the bed.
‘Where have you come from?’ He opened his mouth to say ‘London’ but she carried on without waiting to hear. ‘I came from Geneva this time,’ she said, ‘but before that from Hong Kong and before that from Rome. Not that way round.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘Well on a ship and a train, of course. I might have flown but it seemed better.’
‘Not on your own.’
‘Of course on my own, why not? Did you have to have someone to bring you, like an escort.’
‘I came in charge of the guard.’
‘Oh yes, I’ve done that. I came in charge of stewards and so on.’ She bounced off the bed. ‘Your mother’s dead.’
‘I know.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘I’m not sure. No one has ever said.’
‘Goodness. My mother’s alive, so is my father, but somewhere else. At the moment my stepfather is called Claude. I hope he stays, I quite like Claude, but, of course, he won’t, they never do for long.’
He caught sight of her face then and it was strange and sad and distant.
‘We could go out into the garden.’
‘Why? Is it interesting? I don’t expect so. Gardens aren’t usually.’
‘Our aunt found some jigsaw puzzles.’
Leonora was at the window.
‘Shall I get them out?’
‘I don’t want to do one but you can.’
‘No, it’s all right. How long did it take you to get here?’
‘Two days. I slept on the boat train.’
‘Were you sick?’
He had gone to stand beside her at the window and he saw that he had made her angry.
‘I am never sick. I am an excellent sailor. I suppose you’re sick.’
‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Some people are, some aren’t and you can’t die of being sick.’
Her eyes seemed to darken and the centres to grow smaller. ‘Where do you think people go when they die?’
Edward hesitated. He did not know how to behave towards her, whether she wanted to be friendly or hostile, if she was worried about something or about nothing.
‘They go to heaven. Or … to God.’
‘Or to hell.’
‘Hell isn’t fire you know.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Oh no. Hell is a curse. You’re forced to wander this world and you can never escape.’
‘That sounds all right. It’s what – you wander this world. You’ve wandered to all those places.’
He could sense something in her that needed reassurance and could not ask for it. He did not know, because he was too young and had never before encountered it, that what he sensed in Leonora was pride. Later, he was to understand, though still without having a word for it.
‘Do you remember your mother?’
‘No. Aunt Kestrel does but she didn’t want to talk about her.’
‘What, because it might upset you? How could you be upset about a mother you don’t remember?’
‘No. I think it – it might have upset her.’
‘Oh.’
That was something else he would come to know well, the tone of her voice that signified boredom.
‘Tomorrow we’ll play a trick on that woman,’ she said next. ‘I’ll think of something she won’t like at all.’ She sounded so full of a sort of evil glee at the idea that she alarmed him.
‘I don’t think we ought to do that.’
Leonora turned on him in scorn. ‘Why? Do you want to be her favourite and have her pet you?’
He flushed. ‘No. I just think it would be a bad thing to do. And mean.’
‘Of course it would be a bad thing to do. And mean. How silly you are.’
‘I don’t think she’s very nice but perhaps it’s because she hasn’t any children of her own or doesn’t know any.’
‘Aunt Kestrel hasn’t any children but she doesn’t hate us.’
‘I don’t think Mrs Mullen would hate us.’
‘Of course she hates us. And I am going now to think about what trick to play.’
‘Where are you going?’
But she had already gone. She came and went so silently and completely that he wondered if she did not move at all but simply knew how to just appear and disappear.
He did not see her again until the bell rang for supper and then, just as he was going across the hall, she was there, when she had not been there a second before.
From now on, he determined to watch her.
‘Have you thought?’
But Leonora stared at him blankly across the table.
‘I wish the weather would improve,’ Aunt Kestrel said, slicing a tea-cake and buttering half for each of them. ‘You would find so many good things to do out of doors.’
‘What things?’
Aunt Kestrel looked like someone caught out in a lie. That is how Leonora makes me feel, Edward realised, as if she can see through me to my soul and know what I am thinking and if I am telling the truth, or trying to bluff my way out of something.
She had not yet been here for a whole day and already the mood of the house had been changed entirely.
‘My mother is said to be the most beautiful woman who has ever lived,’ Leonora said now. ‘Did you know that?’
‘How ridiculous,’ Aunt Kestrel said, spluttering out some little droplets of tea. ‘Of course she is not. Violet was a pretty little girl and grew up to be a pretty woman, though she was helped by clothes and having people to bring out the best in her.’
‘What people?’
‘Oh, hairdressers and … you know, those people.. But as to being the most beautiful woman who ever lived … besides, who could know?’
‘It was written in a magazine of fashion.’ Leonora’s face had changed as a blush of annoyance rose through the paleness and her eyes darkened. ‘It was written under her photograph so it would have to be true. Of course it is true. She is very, very beautiful. She is.’ Edward watched in horror as Leonora stood up and picked up a small silver cake fork. ‘She is, she is, she is.’ As she said it, she stabbed the fork down into the cloth and through to the table, one hard stab for each word. Aunt Kestrel’s mouth was half open, her arm slightly outstretched as if she meant to stop the dreadful stabbing, but was unable to make any movement.
‘And no one is allowed to say it is not true.’
She dropped the fork on the floor and it spun away from her, and then she was gone, the skirt of her blue cotton frock seeming to flick out behind her and then disappear as she disappeared. The door closed slowly of its own accord. Edward sat, wishing that he was able to disappear too but forced to wait for Aunt Kestrel’s anger to break over him and take whatever punishment there might be, for them both.
There was none. His aunt sat silent for a moment then said, ‘I wonder if you can find out what is wrong, Edward?’
He sped to the door. ‘She is like her mother,’ she said as he went, but he thought that she was speaking to herself, not to him.
‘She is too like her mother.’