John Harding - Florence and Giles and The Turn of the Screw

‘I – I don’t think that will be possible, ma’am,’ I said. ‘She was on the way here with us when she suddenly felt ill. Mrs Grouse is tending to her.’

‘How unfortunate that she should pick just this moment to be ill. Nothing catching, I hope?’ She waved a dismissive hand at us. ‘Anyhow, if you young people want to go outside for a bit I have no objection, but half an hour, Theo, no longer, and no running about; I don’t want you to bring on another asthma attack just as we’re going away. Oh, and Florence, be so kind as to have them send me some tea. I will have to take it alone if the wretched woman is unwell.’

Outside, Giles begged us to hide-and-seek and he ran off and hid, but Theo and I half-hearted the game. We went and sat on the stone wall behind the house so we could talk, although every five minutes or so Theo had to get up and find Giles just to keep him interested in the game and out of our hair.

‘So, Theo,’ I said, soon as we sat down the first time, ‘you’ll be going back to school.’

He looked down at his hands, those long bony fingers that seemed to have no flesh on them. He beetrooted. ‘That’s just what I came to tell you,’ he said. He raised his head and pained me a look. ‘I should have told you before. I’ve been putting it off because I couldn’t bear to. I’m not returning to school, leastways not yet awhile. We’re going away.’

My heart hopelessed a bird-in-a-cage flutter. ‘Away? What do you mean, away?’

He was still interested in his hands, which were interlocking and freeing themselves as though he had no control over them, like two strange beasts wrestling. ‘We’re all going to Europe, to make a tour of the place, mother, father and I. We sail on Friday week.’

‘Europe,’ I faltered. ‘For how long?’

He looked up at me plaintively. ‘Six months.’

I made no reply. Just then Giles called out so I said, ‘You better go seek him. He’s behind the rhododendron.’

‘I know it!’ said Theo and gangled away.

I tried to take in what he’d just told me. The news could not have come at a worse time. For what other ally but Theo did I have against Miss Taylor? Who else would there be to help me protect my little brother when she tried to steal him away, or worse, if such her intention was? Who else but Theo could I turn to in time of need?

Giles having been found and then told to get lost again, Theo returned and sadly plonked himself down next to me. He sat glumly contemplating the loveliness of the day. Eventually he spoke. ‘Florence, I was wondering…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I was wondering, seeing as I’m going away and all and won’t be seeing you for half a year, if I might, well, you know, kiss you, perhaps? If you’re agreeable this time, that is.’ He anxioused a look at me.

I stared back at him. He had those great ball eyes and a girl just couldn’t romantic him. He was simply too lantern-jawed and long and bony everywhere. He would be a sharp and uncomfortable person to get into a hug with. Nevertheless, I was not inclined to send him away with a refusal.

‘Does it involve a poem?’ I said.

‘Why, I’m afraid not. Darn it, would you believe I haven’t got one today? I’m real sorry about that, truly I am.’

‘Well in that case, the answer is yes.’ And I inclined my head away from him, proffering him a cheek, but he ducked his head and snuck around the front and pinged me one on the lips.

‘Why, Theo,’ I said, ‘that was a sneaky thing to do to a girl.’

‘I know it,’ he said, somehow both bashful and boastful at once. We sat and contemplated the day some more. It didn’t seem right to feel so miserable on such a good day. A tear watermarked my cheek.

Theo reached up one of his oversized digits and gentled it away. ‘Why, Florence, it ain’t so bad. It’s only six months. It’ll soon pass.’

‘No, Theo, you don’t understand.’ And then I blurted him the whole thing, about Miss Taylor and how I had found her walking the house in the night without any light, something no human being but only a ghost or some such could manage, and how she had stood over the sleeping body of my little brother licking her chops and how I feared that at the very least she meant to steal him away from me.

‘Promise me, Theo, promise me that if you return from Europe and anything bad has happened to Giles or me, you won’t rest until that woman has been made to pay. Promise me that.’

‘Why, Florence, don’t talk so, it cannot be so bad as all that. I mean, ghosts! Come now, aren’t you imagining a bit strong here?’

‘Promise me, Theo.’

He shrugged and then, seeing how earnest I was, seized both my hands in his, making a little nest for them, and looked into my eyes and said, ‘I promise, Florence, I surely do.’

The Van Hoosier carriage couldn’t have been more than halfway down the drive when Miss Taylor was behind us at the front door, from where Giles and I were watching Theo and his mother disappear from our lives for at least six months, and perhaps, I reflected bitterly, perhaps, for ever.

‘Oh! Have I missed them?’ she said in a way that made me think she ought to be in the same theatre company as Giles when he pretended never to have been in the library before, it so unconvinced. ‘Well, perhaps they will call again soon.’

Giles’s wave died in mid-air as the carriage finally turned into the main road and disappeared from view. ‘Oh, no, miss, not for a long time. Not for months and months.’

‘Oh, how so?’

She casualled as though uninterested, but did I detect just a hint of triumph on her lips, the ghost of a smile?

Giles looked up at her as she closed the door, drawing us back inside. ‘Theo is going to Italy and France and all those sorts of places. It’s the other side of the Atlantic, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes, miss, you see those places are in Europe on one side of the ocean and we’re here in the Americas on the other side and it’s three thousand miles between.’

Our new governess let go Giles’s misunderstanding. ‘What a shame,’ she said, meaningfulling me a glance. ‘We shall just be on our own, then, shan’t we?’ She turned and started off toward the stairs and we followed her.

‘Are you feeling better, miss?’ puppied Giles, catching her up.

‘Oh, yes, thank you, Giles, I’m much better now.’

And the way she louded that last word, flinging it back over her shoulder, I knew it was meant just for me.

Afterward, lying in my bed, I thought of Theo and how I would miss him and how his enforced abandonment of me left me wholly in the clutches of this fiend, for such I believed her to be, and that led me on to considering the morning’s visit and how Miss Taylor had suddened her faint. Her quick recovery obvioused it to me that she had not been ill at all, but had feigned the whole thing, and there could be but one reason for that, namely that she had wished to avoid meeting Theo and his mother.

I puzzled me awhile over that. Why would she wish to avoid them? What could it mean? I tossed and turned, which was beginning to be my normal bedtime routine these nights, ever since she came.

I eventuallied several thoughts. What was it about Mrs Van Hoosier that made Miss Taylor shun her presence? The answer had to be that Mrs Van Hoosier was not a servant but gentlefolk, and therefore not under the same constraints as Mrs Grouse and Meg and Mary and the like. She would be at liberty to make inquiries to Miss Taylor, to question her about her birth and family and where else she had governessed before. A woman like Mrs Van Hoosier struck me as someone who would worm the secrets out of a stone – though, of course, Miss Taylor couldn’t know that. But no matter what Theo’s mother’s character might have been, it obvioused that our new governess wished to avoid any investigation into her past.