Charlotte Stein - Sweet Agony

And I think he actually means it. There isn’t so much as a whiff of facetiousness about his words. He honestly thinks my parents were monstrous, just because they hated me reading. No one has ever thought they were monstrous because they hated me reading. A teacher once shouted at them for forcing me into shoes three sizes too small, and occasionally an official-looking person would come around and write things down about my bruises and the spoiled food and the constant cans of Carling everywhere.

But that was about it, when it came to outrage over their behaviour.

A fact that I then point out to him, in a roundabout way.

‘You can’t have someone arrested for flushing books down a toilet.’

‘Well, that just speaks volumes about our current justice system. If I had my way I would not only arrest this miscreant but have them flogged in the town square,’ he says, and I feel sure he means that too. So much so that the urge to look at him again is suddenly too keen to withstand. I have to take deep breaths just to stop myself doing it.

Then sublimate it into something else.

‘Tell me honestly: did you time-travel here from 1865?’

‘I wish I had. And possessed the means to travel back.’

‘Even though people bathed a lot less then.’

‘I could accept body odour in exchange for a bit of peace.’

‘You think being alive in 1865 would give you peace?’

‘I think at the very least I would fit in more than I do here,’ he says, though I don’t think he means to. At least I don’t think he means to sound so despairing about it. After the words pop out he seems to make a little tutting noise, and it isn’t aimed at me. It’s aimed at himself. He let out some dark hint of who he is, and it irritates him.

It irritates him so much that he immediately tries to get rid of me in what may be the most ludicrous way possible. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you, farewell,’ he says, as though we just finished on a pleasant note and he is now up and shaking my hand.

Despite the fact that we are both still seated.

And he hasn’t asked me a damned thing.

‘But you haven’t even interviewed me yet.’

‘Of course I have – I enquired about your reading habits.’

‘That hardly constitutes an interview.’

‘Very well then, tell me what you would expect of an interview.’

‘You should ask me my name.’

‘Assume that I have.’

‘Molly Parker.’

‘I see. And then…?’ he asks, and here’s the best thing:

I think he genuinely has no idea.

He needs me to tell him.

‘Then you tell me yours.’

‘Why? I’m not interviewing for any position.’

‘So you want me to go around your house calling you something I just made up,’ I suggest, and practically hear him shudder. It almost makes me want to do it anyway – think up ridiculous monikers and have him be disgusted by all of them.

Snooty McBogtrot, I could call him, then I have to suppress a laugh.

Twenty-two years of never having anything to laugh about, and suddenly it overwhelms me to the point where I have to hold it off. I have to use both hands.

‘That sounds like the very worst thing I can imagine. You may call me Mr Harcroft.’

‘Seems rather unfriendly and impersonal.’

‘I think you will find that I am a rather unfriendly and impersonal man. You will also shortly discover that I am singularly exacting, ruthless in my attention to detail and completely without regard for any and all emotional whims. I brook no challenges to my authority and expect to be deferred to without exception when it comes to the precise system I use to govern my household,’ he says, then quite obviously waits for me to be horrified. The problem is, though, that if he is, he will be waiting for ever. I don’t know how to be horrified by all of this. It seems so strange and fantastical that all I can do is marvel at all of it, from the seating arrangements to his furniture right the way through to his every odd word.

He governs his household, I think.

Is it any wonder I say what I then do?

‘So I got the job then?’ I ask.

After which there is a silence so delicious I could grab it in my hands and eat it alive. He honestly thought I would balk at that, I can tell. He even tries to go one better a moment later, with his directions as to what I should do next. ‘You will be sleeping in the attic,’ he says, as though the attic is his version of the top of a terrible tower. He wants to be the evil wizard who has somehow imprisoned a princess.

But he has to know he can never be. My life before was the prison: this is the escape. And it continues to be, no matter what he says or does. ‘Go there directly and remain until your duties begin in the morning,’ he tells me, and the very last thing I feel is fear. I fizz with the idea of finally seeing his face instead. I wonder and wonder about how a man who uses the word ‘miscreant’ will look, and am actually disappointed when I turn and find he has already disappeared.

Though even that soon fades.

There are other delights to uncover – like the pictures on the walls on the way up the narrow staircase, each one creepier than the one before it. I think they might even deserve the label gothic , which sounded so exciting to me when I first read about it that I secretly dyed a net curtain black and wore it as a headdress in the middle of the night. Now I get to live amidst it, in the form of faded photographs of old bearded men who could well be his ancestors.

He has ancestors .

And if that were not exciting enough, there is the room I am supposed to stay in. Does he understand how exciting this room is to me? I imagine he could never do so, since this is his ordinary and everyday life. But to me none of this is ordinary and everyday. The very presence of a brass double bed is enough to place it outside those boundaries. Even the mattress crosses the line, because at home I used to sleep on folded-over towels and two sleeping bags.

Certainly I’ve never had anything like this.

Nor have I had experience of a room that just belongs to me. I have no concept of drawers that I can just stuff with my things – to the point where I can barely fill one of them, and then only because of my two big jumpers. And though the window is more of a skylight, it lets in the dying glow of the day like nothing I’ve ever seen. I stand on the bed just to look through it, and see all of London spread out before me.

I see my life, as it could really be.

I try not to feel too excited when I wake up. It seems best to keep my expectations low, considering some of the things he said and did the day before. I mean, no one could possibly call him a pleasant person – he confirmed that much with his laughter and his insults alone and even if he hadn’t there have been other signs.

Like the uniform he has hung up in the bathroom for me, swaddled in plastic and so ominous-looking that I take a step back when I see it. For a second I think someone is standing in there waiting for me, and want to scream. Then I realise the someone waiting for me is the person I am supposed to be, and almost do it anyway. Somehow, I suspect I’m going to fail very badly at this. The stockings are silk, which I am almost certainly going to snag, and the shoes have the sort of heels I can never walk in.

Plus, he has to know that the whole thing is never going to fit me. The skirt portion of the dress is way too narrow around the hips, and that bodice will never contain my enormous bust. All those buttons down the front are going to pop open the moment I move – but maybe that was his intention. He wants to see me thoroughly humiliated, after failing to put me in my place yesterday. I was much too amused by him and far too talkative, and this is the lesson I get in return.