Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

“Give it here,” Feely said. “You’re so clumsy.”

I had already felt through the paper that the package contained something soft, and had written it off. Everyone knows that truly great gifts are always hard to the touch, and I could tell, even without opening it, that Aunt Felicity’s was a dud.

I handed it over without a word.

“Oh, look!” Feely said, with fake enthusiasm, tossing aside the paper. “A bed jacket!”

She held the silk monstrosity up to her chest as if she were modeling it. Cross-stitched all over in a padded diamond pattern, the thing looked like a cast-off life jacket from a Chinese junk.

“The jade will go nicely with your complexion,” Daffy said. “Do you want to try it on?”

I turned my face towards the back of the sofa.

“This next one is from Father,” Feely said. “Shall I open it?”

I reached out and took the small packet from her hands. The label read:

To: Flavia

From: Father

Merry Christmas.

There was a picture of a little robin redbreast in the snow.

The paper came away easily enough. Inside was a small book.

“What is it?” Daffy demanded.

“ Aniline Dyes in the Printing of the British Postage Stamp: A Chemical History ,” I read aloud.

Dear old Father. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry.

I held the book out for Daffy to see, forcing myself to remember how excited I had been when I’d first read that the great Friedrich August Kekulé, one of the fathers of organic chemistry, had originally envisioned the tetravalent carbon atom while coming home from Clapham on top of a horse-drawn omnibus. The voice of the conductor calling out “Clapham Road!” had interrupted his train of thought, and he had forgotten his revelation until four years later.

Kekulé had been associated with printing inks, hadn’t he? Hadn’t his friend Hugo Müller been employed by De La Rue, the printers of British postage stamps?

I put the book aside. I would deal with my jumble of feelings later—when I was alone.

“This is from me,” Feely said. “Open it next. Careful you don’t break it.”

I peeled the paper carefully from the flat, square package, knowing as soon as I touched it that it was a phonograph record.

As indeed it was: Toccata, by Pietro Domenico Paradis, from his Sonata in A, played by the superb Eileen Joyce.

To me, it was the greatest piece of music composed since Adam and Eve were camped out in Eden, a melody that bubbled and danced and skittered about like the happy atoms of sodium or magnesium when they are dropped into a beaker of hydrochloric acid.

Feely had occasionally played the Paradis Toccata at my request, but only when she wasn’t angry, so I hadn’t heard it very often.

“Th-thank you,” I said, almost speechless, and I could tell that Feely was pleased.

“Mine next,” Daffy said. “It isn’t much, but then you don’t deserve much.”

Again a flat thin package, tied with string and a label: To F. from D .

It was a steel engraving, glued to a piece of cardboard, of an alchemist at work among his flasks and flagons, his beakers and retorts.

“I cut it out of a book at Foster’s,” Daffy said. “They’ll never miss it. The only books they ever open are the Badminton Library. Hawking, fishing, and hunting and so forth.”

“It’s lovely,” I said. “Beautiful. I’ll ask Dogger to help me frame it.”

“If they find it’s gone missing,” Daffy went on, “I’ll tell them you nicked it. After all, what would I want with a stinky old alchemist.”

I stuck out my tongue at her.

Next was a package from Mrs. Mullet.

Mittens.

“She said you’re going to need them for your frostbitten fingers.”

“Are my fingers frostbitten?” I asked, spreading them out at arm’s length for examination. “They tingle a bit, but they don’t look any different.”

“Oh, just you wait,” Feely said. “Another twenty-four hours and they’ll begin to turn black, after which they’ll fall off. You’ll need to have hooks fitted, won’t she, Daff? Five little hooks on each hand. Dr. Darby says you’re lucky. They’ve improved hooks by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and you might even be able to—”

“Stop it!” I shrieked. My hands were trembling before my eyes.

My sisters exchanged a look whose meaning I had once known, but now, for the life of me, couldn’t remember.

“Let’s leave her alone,” Daffy said. “She’s not fit company when she’s like this.”

At the door they turned back, as if hinged together at their waists.

“Merry Christmas,” they said in unison, and then they were gone.

I lay for a long time in silence, staring at the ceiling.

Was my life always to be like this? I wondered. Was it going to go, forever, in an instant, from sunshine to shadow? From pandemonium to loneliness? From fierce anger to a fiercer kind of love?

Something was missing. I was sure of it. Something was missing, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what it was.

After a while, I let my legs slide heavily to the floor, then raised myself to a sitting position. Tiny fireworks exploded behind my eyes, the result of spending too many days in a horizontal position. I got shakily to my feet, clutching at the back of the sofa for unaccustomed support.

I stood for a moment, waiting for the faintness to pass; then, wrapping my housecoat tightly around myself and trying desperately to be quiet, I shuffled slowly to the door. If anyone knew I was creeping round the house there were bound to be stern lectures.

But the corridors were empty. The villagers and the film crew had gone.

The foyer rang with its usual dark-varnished silence. Buckshaw had returned to normal.

Coming from somewhere above, a solitary beam of sunshine shone down upon the black-and-white checkerboard tiles, falling precisely along the black line painted so many years ago by Antony and William de Luce to divide Buckshaw into two armed camps.

How sad, I thought. Their hatred had outlived them.

I made my way up the east staircase, one slow step at a time. At the top I stopped to rest, perching for a while on the last step like a bird on a bough.

Only here at the top of the house did I feel myself removed, in a way, from the crushing burden of being a de Luce. Up here, above it all, I was somehow myself.

Simply Flavia.

Flavia Sabina de Luce. Full stop.

After a time, I pulled myself to my feet and made my way unsteadily towards my laboratory. It had been simply ages since I’d been away for so long from my sanctum sanctorum .

I took a deep breath … opened the door … and stepped inside, and the smile that spread across my face brought tears to my disbelieving eyes.

“Yaroo!” I shouted, and I didn’t give a beetle’s bottom who heard me.

“Ya-rooo!”

For Shirley

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AGAIN TO MY EDITORS, Bill Massey, of Orion Books in London, and Kate Miciak, of Random House in New York City. Bill and Kate have been joint—and fearsome—Keepers-of-the-Gate while I’ve been away in 1950. Words can never express my gratitude.

To Kristin Cochrane and Brad Martin, of Doubleday Canada, whose faith in Flavia has never wavered. Kristin has twice stood in for me to accept awards: the kind of debt that can never be repaid.

To my agent, Denise Bukowski, for being there, always prepared, every step of the way. And to Sandra Homer, Elizabeth De Francesca, and John Greenwell of the Bukowski Agency, for scaling the mountains of paperwork, all with good humor.

To my friends John and Janet Harland, for their comments and many valuable suggestions.