Florence and Giles and The Turn of the Screw

I swallowed and gingerlied it out, as if it were some holy relic, some saint’s bones that, roughly handled, might turn to dust. I placed the book on the desk and opened it and saw at once what it was, an album of photographs, such as the one Mary had once showed me, of all her family, going back years.

The first page held but one picture, a man in a business suit standing in front of Blithe House. I instanted who it was, for it was the same face as the painting on the turn of the stairs: my uncle. He had the same bold stare, the same slight play of amusement about his lips. I turned the page. Here he was again, but this time pictured in some photographer’s studio, next to a potted plant. Beside him stood a woman in a white dress, a beautiful woman, her arm linked in his, smiling too, but with a free and easy happiness, not at all like the man, who, looking again, I saw was pleased with himself, like an angler prouding it alongside some big fish he has landed.

I turned the page and found another picture of my uncle, again with a woman, but whether or not it was the same woman, I could not tell, for the photograph had been cut, a ragged square hole where the woman’s head should have been. This shivered me in the silent night and I over-my-shouldered, suddening a feeling of a man standing there with a knife as if to do to me what had been done to the woman in the picture. There was no one there, though already I began to see shapes in the shadowy corners of the room. I looked again at the photograph, at the decapitated woman, and calmed me a little, telling myself it was quite understandable, that someone had removed her head to place it in a locket or some such. It did not sinister in the least. Then I turned back to the first photograph and then once more to the second. The women were not the same person, for the first woman was taller, much taller than this one, which I could see despite the absence of the second’s head. She must have been shorter by half a foot.

I turned the page again. Once again my uncle and the second woman, and again she had no head. Then a third picture, this time with the woman holding a baby, a small baby by the look of it, swaddled and swamped in a long white shawl. Again the woman’s face had been cruelly cut. I turned the next page and there was another picture, the same as the last, except that now a small child, a girl, had joined the others. She stood beside them, tight-lipped and staring fiercely out at the photographer, as though ready to fly at anyone who took a step closer, and the look of her shivered me quite and I thought how I would not like to meet such a child, especially not now, in the dead of night. And then something familiared about her, about those defiant eyes, and it pennydropped: this scary child was me.

I turned the page and there were no more pictures. I franticked back. The family group. If the girl was I, then the baby must be Giles, and the woman without a face his mother, my stepmother, the woman who had drowned. But if so, then why were they with my uncle? It did not make sense.

I stared at the man for some time. From the pose, from their easy standing against one another, it certained he was the woman’s husband and the father of this family. But how could that be? How could my uncle also be my father? I peered at him closer. Perhaps, after all, he was not the man in the oil painting at the turn of the stairs. He was like, very like, but maybe not the same. And then it perfect-sensed me. It was not my uncle after all, but his brother, who family-resemblanced him. They were almost as alike as twins, it was so good a match. Having digested this, another thought came to me and I franticked back to the first page. The man was definitely the same one as in the other pictures, it doubtlessed that. And if so, then this other woman, this woman so happy and proud, must be my mother, who died before she could ever know her little girl.

I stared and stared and the more I looked, the more the woman’s features blurred, for my eyes had misted over, and I had to close the book for fear of drippery. I shut my eyes and deep-breathed. I opened the drawer, put back the book and reluctanted it closed. I picked up my candle and matches and made for the door. I had half-outed it when I suddened a decision. I turned and quicked back to the desk, tugged open the drawer, took out the book, opened it at the first page and snatched my mother’s picture. I replaced the album, closed the drawer and left the room, and upstairsed fast with my candle lighting the way. Taking the photograph was a rash act, for if I was caught with it I would be redhanded and could not pretend nightwalking. So I figured I might as well be sheeped as lambed and keep the candle to light my way too. But I uneventfulled my way back to my room and, after I know not how long spent gazing at my mother’s picture, at some point fell asleep.

9

Next day I took my precious photograph up to my tower, where I could gaze at it and talk to it without fear of discovery. And that was what I was doing a couple of days later when, purely by chance, I upglanced and familiared a lanky figure struggling through the snowdrifts along the drive. I overjoyed, for it had been a fortnight since I’d last seen him and I longed to tell him my great news.

But no sooner did I meet him at the front door than I hopedashed. He could but brief me a visit, he had not even time to skate, indeed had come to collect his skates, for he would need them in New York. ‘They’re shipping me back,’ he announced. ‘The doc says I’m better now and they’re putting me back in school for the last week before the holidays.’

I fetched my coat and his skates and we awkwarded down the drive together. I packed a rueful snowball and threw it at him, catching him in the face, causing him to cry out, and I gladded to have hurt him. ‘I am so lonely,’ I said. ‘You have no idea what it is like. And you rush off so blithely, you have not even time to hear my news and see what I have to show you.’

‘I’ll be back next year when the family come for the summer again. The time will soon pass. And Giles will be back for the Christmas holidays any day now.’

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and thrust it into my hand. Then, without another word, he turned and trudged off through the snow. I watched him until the last moment, when he made the turn into the main road and disappeared. Then I unfolded the paper he had given me and read:

I cannot speak, I cannot talk

For I am sent back to New York

But all of me will not go hence

My heart remains here with Florence

It was such a terrible poem that as I folded up the paper again I could not help but stifle a sob.

Theo had been right that at least I had the return of Giles to look forward to and I lonelied away the days, scarce able to read, my whole being an impatience of waiting. And at last the day came when John harnessed Bluebird to the trap and we set off to the railroad station, he and Mrs Grouse and I, to meet my darling brother. We stood by the track as the great iron dragon clanged and screeched to a halt beside us and belched out a cloud of steam that enveloped both it and us and then the fog of it began to clear and before us, on the platform, stood Giles, peering through the mist. We came together in a flingery of arms and a great huggery of kisses. My brother could not keep still but jumped up and down and danced from one foot to the other and gabbled an incomprehensible of nonsense. It was only when we were in the trap, leaving the town, in silence save for Bluebird’s steady clip-clop, that I understood what Giles was so excited about.

‘I’m not to go back, Flo, I’m not to go back!’

Mrs Grouse doubtfulled me one from behind his back. ‘Well, no, not for a while, Master Giles. Not until after Christmas, anyway.’

He rounded on her. ‘No, Mrs Grouse, you don’t understand. Not ever!’

It was true. When we reached Blithe, Giles opened his trunk and produced a letter. Of course, as I was not able to read, Mrs Grouse did not show it to me, nor did she read it aloud, except for one or two phrases, ‘a too timid and fragile disposition for the hurly-burly of a lively boys’ school’, ‘not sufficiently mature or academically advanced’, ‘one or two incidents which, although trivial in themselves, give cause for concern, given his somewhat vulnerable nature’, ‘suggest tutoring at home would be more appropriate for the time being, possibly with the gentler nature of a female instructor’. I had no need to see the whole thing, but gisted it from this. It obvioused that Giles’s simple nature had led to him being bullied. It was easier to remove him than deal with the bullies, and that was what the school had done.

Mrs Grouse all-concerned as she folded the letter and tucked it into her pocket. I slipped my hand into Giles’s and gave it a squeeze. I near cheered aloud. It was such wonderful news. My little brother was safe and sound and I would not lonely any more. All would be as it had always been.

Mrs Grouse bit her lip. ‘I shall have to write your uncle about this. He will have to engage someone, a governess, I guess.’ She looked up and seeing us smiling at her, beamed one herself. ‘But not now. I won’t write yet. It will need a lot of careful thought, a letter to your uncle, for I have strict instructions not to bother him, and I have not time this side of Christmas. Let’s get Christmas out of the way and I’ll write him then.’

Well, as you may imagine, we had a fine old time. I had asked Mrs Grouse to buy skates for Giles as his present and on Christmas morning we took to the ice and had a jollity of falling over and pulling one another over and generally returning to a time when we were small. As I watched Giles so happy and carefree upon the lake, so sweet that he laughed even when he was hurt, I thought how I would never again let him into the world where he would be evilled and tortured, but would utmost me to keep him always here by my side at Blithe, where I could protect him from all the bad things beyond.

I thought to show him the photograph of my mother, but then I knew that it would not do, eagering to though I was, because then I would have to explain about his own mother. The shocking vandalism that had been carried out on her image must never come to his attention. What would anyway be the use of showing him pictures of his mother without her face? What would he feel but that the desecration of her was a cruel attack upon himself? So I tonguebit and own-counselled. I would let nothing spoil our new happiness.

But, of course, something did. Or rather someone. A month later Miss Whitaker arrived.

Now, the least said about Whitaker, the better, at least in her first incarnation. She was a silly young woman who stood and besotted before the portrait of my uncle on the stairs and twittered about how handsome he was and how when he interviewed her he had seemed quite taken with her and had all but given her the post of Giles’s governess before she had spoke a word. I saw through this straightway; it obvioused our uncle, who had no time for us at all, could not be bothered to question the stupid woman, but wanted to not-more-ado the matter. It doubtlessed she was the only person he saw for the post, for anyone else must have been preferred.

Suffice it to say, I did not see the icy heart of this creature then or things might have worked out different. All I awared was that she neglected Giles, in whom she had less interest than in brushing her hair and mirroring her looks; I innocented her true nature and when she tragicked upon the lake I near drowned myself in a lake of my own tears, it so upset me. I thought her merely foolish and I guilted I had so despised her almost as much as I guilted that I did not save her, even though it impossibled me to do so, and kept thinking ‘if only I had this’ and ‘if only I had that’, even though all these things would nothing have availed. I reproached me, too, for the bad thoughts that were in my head when she went to her watery grave, for it was the very day after she unlibraried me and I had spoke the words over and over in my heart, ‘I wish she would die, I wish she would die’, but never meant them, and when my wish was granted I near died of grief myself that I could no way call them back.

PART TWO

10

We were history-repeating-itselfing in front of the house, the three of us, Mrs Grouse, Giles and I, lined up to welcome the new governess just as we’d been for poor Miss Whitaker what seemed a lifetime ago (as indeed it was, her lifetime). Because our uncle was travelling in Europe and it difficulted to contact him, Giles and I had halcyoned it for four whole months, the time from when Miss Whitaker misfortuned until now, the day of the arrival of her replacement. It had been like the old pre-Whitaker, pre-school days, only better, because having twice lost our former life of just Giles and me feralling throughout the house and grounds, first for one reason, him awaying to school, then the other, Whitaker, I now precioused it all the more. I had forgotten how busy life with Giles could be, how he could December a July day, making it fly past so that dusk always seemed to come early. And when the Van Hoosiers arrived for the summer vacation, Theo had joined us in our games nearly every day and the three of us had run wild as if there was no tomorrow. But of course there was and it was here. School would be starting and Theo was returning to New York. And Miss Whitaker’s replacement would be here any moment.

All we had left of our golden summer was the time it took John to horse-and-trap the new woman from the railroad station in town, and that little was taken up by Mrs Grouse inspecting us for general cleanliness and tidiness. Giles was school-suited and I best-frocked, with a shining white pinafore thrown in for good measure. Satisfied that we were presentable, or at least as presentable as we were ever going to be, Mrs Grouse spent the last few minutes goodmannering us and attempting once again to teach me how to drop a curtsey (I had so half-hearted it with Miss Whitaker when she arrived as to make it unnoticeable). For some reason, although I was more than willing to courtesy the governess with a curtsey, my limbs reluctanted until finally Mrs Grouse exasperated. She regarded me critically and forlorned a sigh. ‘Well, it will have to do, I guess. At least Miss Taylor will be able to see the intention is there, even if the execution is somewhat lacking.’

So there we stood, in front of the house where the horse and cart would pull up, a little guard of honour, the three of us on parade. At last you could hear Bluebird’s hooves on the metalled main road and then the horse and trap hove into sight at the top of the drive and we all eagered to make out the person seated behind John.

Moments later she stood before us. She was much older than poor Miss Whitaker, her appearance hovering on the brink before middle age. Her skeletal figure was dressed all in black and I thought how strange that was, for Miss Whitaker had told me governesses always wore grey, but I noticed how well it matched the rooks which were even now circling above us, as though they too had turned out specially to welcome her. She was a handsome woman, with strong features, and dark eyes and black hair. As John handed her down from the trap her eye caught mine and there was something in her look, not familiarity exactly, but some kind of recognition of who I was, that all at once anxioused me, as though she could see clear through the me I pretended to be. This glance discomfited me and evidently her too, for no sooner did our eyes connect than she turned away and gifted Mrs Grouse a smile.

‘You must be Miss Taylor,’ unnecessaried Mrs Grouse; the new arrival unlikelied to be anyone else.

‘And you must be Mrs Grouse,’ returned Miss Taylor, with not quite enough mockery for Mrs Grouse to know it was there. She turned to Giles and me and – her eyes ready now and revealing nothing – larged us a smile. ‘And you of course are Florence and little Giles.’ I dropped her the curtsey when she cued my name, though it wasn’t a great success. ‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am,’ I muttered, trying to sound as if I meant it, but it somehow came out like Sunday-morninging the Lord’s Prayer.

‘Well, Giles,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘have you nothing to say to me?’

My brother nervoused and bit his lip.

‘Come now, Giles,’ urged Mrs Grouse, ‘don’t be rude, speak up.’

‘Well,’ said Giles, screwing his face up with genuine interest, ‘would you rather be boiled in oil and eaten by cannibals, or bayoneted by a Confederate soldier and watch him pull your guts out before your very own eyes?’

Miss Taylor stared at him a moment, then eyebrowed Mrs Grouse. ‘I fancy we have a little work to do here,’ she lighthearted in a manner that somehow managed to critical too.

Inside she didn’t look around much or say anything about the house; it was as though it weren’t any different from what she’d expected. It wasn’t exactly something you could have put your finger on, but it seemed as if she had no curiosity or interest in it, the way most people have in a new place. She turned to Mrs Grouse and brusqued, ‘Now, if you would have your manservant take my bags up to my room, I would like to freshen up and lie down after my journey. What time is dinner served?’

‘Well, we generally eat at six o’clock.’

‘Very well, I shall be down then.’ And so saying she followed John up the stairs. Behind her she left the scent of some flower, but try as it might, my mind could not clutch what it was. Mrs Grouse stood watching her until she disappeared, and then weaked a smile at Giles and me. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. And nobody had ever before used the word ‘servant’ about John.

It was at supper, or rather before it even got started, that the first difficulty asserted itself. Miss Taylor appeared just before the appointed time and Mrs Grouse showed her into the small breakfast room off the kitchen where we always ate. Miss Taylor stopped in the doorway and stared at the table.

‘Is there something wrong?’ anxioused Mrs Grouse, forced into a squeezery between the governess and the door to get into the room.

‘Why, yes. There are four places.’ She swung round to face Mrs Grouse, who coloured. Miss Taylor tigered her a smile. ‘Is there perhaps another child I don’t know about? Come, Giles, how is your math? You, Florence and me, how many does that make?’

‘The fourth place is for me,’ said Mrs Grouse. ‘I’ve always eaten with the children. You see, it was only we three for years and years until Master Giles went off to school, and when Miss Whitaker came she just joined in with the rest of us.’

‘That’s as maybe, but you see it’s not appropriate. You are the housekeeper and I am the governess. We must maintain the proprieties. For the sake of the children’s education, you understand.’

Mrs Grouse bridled. She was not one to be walked over. ‘Miss Whitaker was quite happy with the arrangement.’

Miss Taylor raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah yes, but I am not Miss Whitaker.’

Mrs Grouse left the room. The three of us sat down. A moment later a very red-faced Mary came in and began removing the crockery and cutlery from the fourth place. Miss Taylor smiled up at her. ‘You may serve the food now,’ she said.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Outside, the wind howled like a wild beast stalking round the house looking for a way in. And within me, too, there was a howling, one that I couldn’t block out by pillowing my ears. It feared me to sleep that I would dream again of poor Miss Whitaker and the day she died, but my waking anxiety was a shadowy thing I couldn’t quite see or put a name to, and all the worse for that. In the end I decided to do what I often did at such times, to sneak down to the library and read there for a couple of hours until I should be tired enough for sleep, though there was an increased risk that I would be caught now that Miss Taylor was here, of course. Although the wind huffed and puffed without, within the house was quiet as the grave, save for the ticking of the clocks and the occasional creaking of the joists as Blithe settled itself down for the night. But then, if I were caught, all I had to do was pretend to be on one of my nightwalks. It much more difficulted to reach the library in this fashion than it had to sneak down to Mrs Grouse’s sitting room. The library far-ended the house, whereas the housekeeper’s room bottomed the stairs, being almost directly below mine. My main problem, as always, lay in not being able to have a candle to light my way, for that I never had on my nightwalks. In the darkness I had to careful not to stumble against some piece of furniture, some random occasional table, for example, and so wake the whole household; also I must map in my mind where I was. It would be all too easy to wrongturn and so end up wandering the whole night until dawn showed me the way.

Still, as this was not a nightwalk, I was able at least to blindman my arms and so feel ahead of me for any obstruction. In this manner, slowly I reached the long corridor. There was no light coming in through the windows there because the night was unmooned, a fact which unlikelied, but not impossibled, a nightwalk, although I wasn’t concerned about that. It was when I penetrated a little further and was not far from the staircase that would take me down to the first floor that I heard something. I stood still and listened, all my senses alert. At first I took it for the wind blowing a tree branch against some part of the house, for it was exactly the sibilant sound of leaves brushing against something. But then I realised the noise was not fixed but in motion and that, moreover, it was coming toward me. A moment later I recognised it for what it was, the swishing of skirts against floorboards. Whoever it was was, like me, uncandled, but nevertheless able to move at a considerable pace, so that she – it could only be a woman, that noise – must soon be on top of me. It wondered me any normal woman could move so fast in this pitch black. What kind of creature could it be, other than a cat? She could be no more than ten feet away from me, and rushing toward me, so that we must at any moment collide. I instincted to flatten my back against the wall and, as luck would have it, found space behind me, a shallow alcove let into the wall. I pressed myself into it and held my breath. The woman was right on top of me now and, suddenly, the swishing stopped, and it was as if whatever creature this was had sensed my presence, or scented me, as a cat will a mouse or a dog a rat. All was quiet, even the wind seemed to have died down as though in league with this other nightwalker to enable her to better hear. I heard a small sound, a sharp intake of breath, followed by a lengthy pause as the breath was held while the breather listened, followed by a long, slow exhale. I sensed she was turning this way and that, sniffing the air like a predator seeking its prey. My lungs were near bursting from my own long breath-holdery but I dared not let it out, not only because of the noise but because my fellow nightwalker would then feel it on her face as I felt hers upon mine.

At last, just when I thought the game was up and I should have to breathe now or never would again, there abrupted a swish as if the woman had turned sharply and then the swishing resumed in the same direction as it had been headed in the first place, but now, thankfully, growing quieter and quieter until finally it whispered away. I gasped out my breath and sucked in air like a swimmer surfacing after a long dive. I had but one thought, namely to put as much distance as possible between me and this woman, if woman it were and not ghost, and so I felt my way along the corridor and down to the first floor and thence to the library. There I lit my candle and built my nest and curled up in it, although I was too disturbed now to have any hope of sleep and so fretted my way through the rest of the night until light began to finger its way around the edges of the drapes and I was able to fast my way back to my room.

I lay in my bed exhausted and troubled. Who had the woman been? The obvious answer was Miss Taylor, for I had encountered nothing like what had occurred last night ever before and it too much coincidented that she had just arrived in the house. As I recalled the incident now it seemed to me there had been something of her scent in the air, that scent I had noticed about her when we first met, and I all-at-onced what it was, the smell of lilies, which I remembered so well from Miss Whitaker’s funeral, their ugly beauty upon her coffin. But perhaps all this was simply now my imagination, that love of embroidery I have, the makery-up of my mind. Then again, if what had passed me in the passage last night was not the new governess, what was it? Could it have been a ghost or some other supernatural thing? For what woman, especially a stranger so newly arrived, could so swift the house in the dark? And if it were not of this world, if it were one of the Blithe ghosts, what was it seeking here? Ghosts I knew were often troubled spirits unable to make their way in the next world because of the manner in which they had left this one. I understood all too well then who such a being might be. For had not poor Miss Whitaker tragicked a sudden and early death with no opportunity to make her peace with her maker? Might she not be tossing and turning beneath the earth in the local cemetery because of the fashion in which she passed away? I so frighted myself with these thoughts that I worried for Giles and had to rise from my bed, exhausted though I was, and sneak the corridor to his room, where I found him blissfully, ignorantly asleep. I stretched myself out beside him, folded one arm over him, and fell straightway into a deep and heavy slumber.