Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

The curtains swung back behind the figure; the hand lifted, and I saw a woman standing there, as unfamiliar and as vividly unreal as an actress on a stage. She wore a dressing gown of patterned silk, and red-gold hair flowed to her shoulders. She set down the candle on the sill and took something made of silver from the pocket of the gown. She stood there, facing the window and staring straight at me, and began to brush her hair. Her movements were languorous as though she were stroking herself. The front of the gown fell open, and I saw the nightdress beneath, with its low-cut neck.

I doubted that Miss Carswall could see me but I knew that the performance was for me, just as I knew that Mrs Frant, waking or sleeping, was in the room on the other side of the curtains. My mind filled with unchaste thoughts. They say that redheads are lubricious. Here, it seemed, was ample confirmation: Miss Carswall was revealing herself to me, and deriving pleasure from the knowledge that I was watching, and perhaps also from the fact that Sophie was a few yards away from her.

The snow continued to drift down into the yard. My mouth was dry, my breathing shallow. I hardly noticed how cold I was becoming, or that my cigar had gone out. At last, Miss Carswall slipped the brush back into the pocket and stood for a moment, gazing out. Slowly she shook her head, and the movement made her hair ripple and sway above her shoulders. Her lips parted. She smoothed her nightdress against her body, against the swell of her bosom.

She dropped me the ghost of a curtsey, picked up the candle and slipped through the gap in the curtains to the room beyond.

The snow had stopped by morning, and the sky was a hard, brilliant blue. Though the main thoroughfares of the city soon turned to chilly brown slush, most of the snow remained a pristine white, so bright it seemed to possess its own inner illumination. For an hour or two the world lost its familiarity.

We ate our breakfast in the private parlour. There was, Mr Carswall announced, no question of returning to Monkshill-park today. John coachman believed the road would be perfectly safe, but John coachman was a fool. Miss Carswall was in complete agreement with her father, not least because she wished to make a number of purchases.

"I daresay Sir George and the Captain will come and see how Mrs Johnson does," she added with a little laugh. "And perhaps, if there is time, I might see the property Uncle Wavenhoe left me."

"Aye, why not?" said her father. "There is the inn, of course, and a small brewery adjacent, together with a row of cottages."

When Miss Carswall talked so blithely of her inheritance, I noticed that Mrs Frant stared at her plate, and her lips were compressed. It was unfeeling in her cousin to talk so: had it not been for that strange scene at Mr Wavenhoe's deathbed, the legacy would have been Mrs Frant's; though perhaps it might have been hers only to vanish in the collapse of Mr Frant's fortunes.

They had hardly cleared the table when there came a tap on the door and Sir George and Captain Ruispidge were announced. They asked after their cousin.

"She is still asleep," said Miss Carswall. "My maid is watching over her. I looked in a moment ago. She woke in the night and was restless, and we gave her a dose of laudanum shortly before dawn."

"I shouldn't wonder if she was afflicted with an inflammation of the brain," Mr Carswall said. "It can strike with great suddenness."

The Ruispidge brothers said everything that was fitting about Mrs Frant's and Miss Carswall's kindness to their unfortunate cousin. Then they and the Carswalls were free to discuss the ball, and to agree how delightful it had been. Mr Carswall described several games of whist in perhaps excessive detail to an audience that dwindled to Mrs Lee dozing by the fire. Captain Ruispidge sat by Mrs Frant, and talked with her in a low voice. Sir George and Miss Carswall moved away from the group at the fire and sat beside a window. I overheard fragments of their conversation, which suggested that he was outlining to her his plans to endow a village school, to be run on strict religious principles. Miss Carswall listened to him with every appearance of delighted attention; she was not a woman who did things by halves.

A little later, Mr Carswall was shocked to discover that Lady Ruispidge intended to drive back to Clearland-court with Mrs Johnson later in the day. "Quite apart from the inclement weather, my dear sir, what of Mrs Johnson's health?"

"She will be far better off at Clearland," Sir George said. "Besides, we have trespassed on your kindness long enough."

Miss Carswall clasped her hands. "Will you and Captain Ruispidge return with her?"

Sir George's long, bony face re-arranged itself into a smile. "I think not. Indeed, my brother and I were hoping we might prevail on you and Mr Carswall – and Mrs Frant, of course, and Mrs Lee – to dine with us."

"We will be just ourselves, a family party," the Captain put in, smiling winningly at Mrs Frant. "If you do us the honour of accepting, you need have no scruples about the propriety of it."

Dinner was soon understood to be a remarkably elastic term: it stretched to include a shopping expedition and the inspection of Miss Carswall's property in Oxbody-lane. But none of these activities required my presence. After breakfast, Mr Carswall went to sleep and I was left without employment.

I gave myself a holiday and passed an hour or two in exploring the city. After visiting the cathedral close and the cathedral itself, I retraced our route to the Tolsey the previous evening, to the doorway of the bank where Mrs Johnson had lain; and, on the other side of the road, to the alley which had swallowed up the running man. I allowed myself to drift with the crowds, who washed me down to the forbidding walls of the County Gaol, to the workhouse, and then to the quayside, where the spars and rigging formed a tangle of black scratches on the louring winter sky.

Growing weary, in mind as well as body, I returned to Fendall House. I longed for certainty. At times it seemed to me that I could rely on nothing and no one, except perhaps on the affection of Rowsell and Dansey; and even their goodwill might evaporate if I examined it too closely or relied overmuch upon their benevolence.

I went upstairs to my room. Though there was no fire, I preferred its solitude to the warmth of the parlour and the probability of company. I had still to finish my letter to Rowsell. The windowsill had a broad ledge which I used as my desk. I had been writing for no more than five minutes when I heard a tap at the door.

"Come in," I called.

I turned in my chair as the door opened. Mrs Frant stood hesitating on the threshold. I leapt up, upsetting the ink in my agitation and sending a spatter of black drops across the page. We looked at each other in silence. At last, and at the same moment, we burst into speech.

"I beg your pardon, Mr Shield, I-"

"Pray sit down. I'm afraid-"

We stopped. Usually in such situations, one smiles at the other person, for the simultaneous speech removes the embarrassment by giving one something to share with the other. But neither of us smiled.

It was such an unbearably squalid little room, an unworthy setting for a lady. I was aware of the unmade bed, and the stuffy atmosphere, the faint hint of cigar smoke remaining from the previous evening. Yet because of the setting, Mrs Frant's beauty blazed all the more. She was like the sun on the snow: so brilliant she seemed to illuminate herself from within; so beautiful that my eyes could hardly believe what they saw.

In a whirlwind of activity, I pushed my writing materials aside and covered them with a handkerchief. I turned the single chair and begged Mrs Frant to sit down. I remained standing. The room was so tiny, like a cabin on a ship, that I could have stretched out my arm and touched her. She looked down at her hands and then out of the window. From her chair she must have seen the window of her own room, the setting of her cousin's private performance the previous night. At the memory, I felt simultaneously ashamed and excited.