Anna, Where Are You?

CHAPTER XII

Margaret Moray received Miss Silver’s letter at breakfast on the following day. It was a dark morning, and she took it to the window to get a better light. Then, still without opening it, she put it down before her husband. “What do you make of it, Charles?”

He gave it his frowning attention, asked to have the light switched on, and slanted the envelope towards it, flap uppermost.

“Well, I should say it had been opened.”

“So should I.”

She slit it carefully at the bottom end and read the innocuous missive aloud.

Charles Moray looked up from his porridge.

“What were you to do about it?”

“Let Frank Abbott have it, and send her a postcard to let her know whether we think it’s been tampered with. The postscript about the wool is the cue. If I was quite sure, I was to say, ‘How much of the wool do you want? I can get it all right.’ ” She hesitated a moment. “I don’t know that I can make it as definite as that.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Well, I thought I might say, ‘I think I can get the wool you want. Will find out for certain and let you know.’ I suppose they will be able to make sure at the Yard. Do you know, Charles, I do wish she hadn’t gone down there. I don’t like it a bit.”

Charles Moray didn’t like it either, but he wasn’t going to say so. Instead, he unfolded the rather lively newspaper with which he preferred to cheer his porridge and remarked in a carping tone that Beauty Queens got plainer every year.

Margaret came to look over his shoulder.

“Darling, what a frightful bathing-dress!”

“If you call it a dress! I shouldn’t! I wonder how much more she could leave off without getting arrested!”

She kissed the top of his head.

“I don’t know, darling-I’ve never thought it out. I do hope Michael isn’t being late for school. Betty will cut it too fine.”

Mrs. Moray’s postcard was duly delivered by Mr. Hawke next day. He was naturally aware that the new governess up at Deepe House was an indefatigable knitter, but he found himself unable to take a passionate interest in whether she could or could not get some particular kind of wool. And why write to London about it? Miss Weekes at the Fancy Stores in Dedham had a very good selection.

Meeting Miss Silver on his way up to the house, he imparted this information, adding,

“And Mrs. Hawke says it’s the best she’s seen for ever so long -quite pre-war, as you might say.”

He bicycled on to Deep End, pleased with his own kind thought and with Miss Silver’s pleasant response. And no harm in doing Miss Weekes a good turn neither, her sister Grace being married to a cousin of his own at Ledstow.

Miss Silver went rather thoughtfully back to the house with her postcard, which she made a point of showing to Mrs. Craddock.

“This special shade of pink is sometimes a little difficult, and it must be an exact match. Mrs. Moray was so kind as to say that she would do her best to get it for me.”

It was a little later that Jennifer came into the room. Since this was considered to be holiday time, Miss Silver had not attempted regular lessons, but was endeavouring to find things that would interest the children to hear about or to do. Maurice was working on a model engine, and what Maurice did Benjy of course must copy. In Jennifer she discovered a quick and sensitive response to poetry and drama. Some short one-act plays had been obtained, and all three children were rehearsing one of them. Already some pattern had been introduced into their days, and the first beginnings of order and punctuality instilled.

Jennifer came in now, said briefly, “Mrs. Masters wants to see you before she goes,” and then stood staring out of the window as Mrs. Craddock put down her mending and hurried out of the room.

Jennifer did not speak. She looked out at a graceful leafless tree, tracing its outline on the glass with the tip of her finger. Miss Silver, watching, was aware of the moment when she stopped thinking about the tree and the pattern which it made against the sky. Until that moment Jennifer’s thoughts had been lifted into an atmosphere of pure enjoyment-this lovely line and that, the way they crossed!, the way through all the crossing and turning that they sprang upward towards the light. And then all at once she didn’t see the tree or the sky any more. She saw her own hand spread out against the glass-a long, thin hand with the shape of the bones just showing through because a gleam of wintry sun was on the pane and its light made the flesh translucent.

It was when the sun came out that Jennifer stopped seeing the tree and began to stare at her hand. Looking on with interest and concern, Miss Silver was aware of a stiffening, a tension, an extraordinary concentration of the child’s whole being. She might have been looking at something repulsive, something horrible.

Miss Silver laid her knitting down upon her knee and said in her most matter-of-fact tone,

“Is there anything wrong with your hand, my dear?”

Jennifer whipped round, startled, angry.

“Why should there be?”

“I thought perhaps-you looked as if you were not very comfortable.”

“It’s just a hand, isn’t it? It’s just my own hand. Why shouldn’t I look at it if I like? There’s nothing wrong about looking at your own hand, is there?”

Miss Silver had taken up her knitting again. She said with a smile,

“Sometimes if you look too long at a thing it gets out of focus. It may even look like something else.”

Jennifer tossed back her dark untidy hair.

“Well then, it didn’t! It looked like a hand. It just looked like my own hand-see?”

When she turned round she had put her hands out of sight behind her back. Now she thrust them out at Miss Silver, staring not at them but at her.

“They’re just my hands-they couldn’t be anything else. I don’t know what you are talking about. They’re just my hands.”

Miss Silver continued to smile.

“And sadly dirty ones, my dear. It would be much easier for you to keep the nails clean if they were cut a good deal shorter. Your hands are a very nice shape. If you will allow me to cut your nails, you will not only find them much easier to keep clean, but a great deal pleasanter to look at.”

She thought there was the beginning of a shudder, but it was controlled. With an abrupt movement Jennifer turned away and went over to the bookshelf, where she stood fingering the books, pulling one out a little way and pushing it back again, taking another down and fluttering the pages. Presently she said in a discontented voice,

“They’re all as old as the hills. They belonged to the house. Did you know that? And the house used to belong to the Everlys. There aren’t any of them left now. Miss Maria Everly was the last of them, and she died before the war. She was ninety-six years old. This was her schoolroom, and these were her books. There aren’t any more Everlys. Old Mr Masters told me about them. He’s Mrs. Masters’ father-in-law- he lives in the cottage with the post-box on the wall. He remembers Miss Maria Everly. He says she was a terror, but a real lady for all that. He says there aren’t any left now-only bits of girls in breeches, and some that are old enough to know better. He’s a very interesting person to talk to-I like going down there and talking to him. Only sometimes-” She frowned and broke off.

“Sometimes what, my dear?”

“Oh, nothing, He won’t talk to everyone, you know-not about the Everlys. He says least said, soonest mended. You won’t say I talked about them, will you? Did you know all the furniture in this room belonged to the house? It was the schoolroom, and nobody bothered to have the things taken away. The good things were all sold, but He bought the rest when he bought the house.”

Since Jennifer never gave Mr. Craddock any name, the pronoun no longer surprised Miss Silver. She let it pass without comment.

Jennifer pulled out another book. “Ministering Children!” she said in a tone of scorn. “I hate them!”

Miss Silver, who was familiar with this pious classic, remarked mildly that there were fashions in books just as there were fashions in clothes.

“They talked differently a hundred years ago, just as they dressed differently, but I do not think that they were at all different in themselves.”

Jennifer rammed the Ministering Children back into their place.

“I hate them!” she said with emphasis. Then with a sudden and complete change of manner she turned round and came out with, “I saw Miss Tremlett, and I wasn’t quick enough, so she saw me. She says they’ve got a paying guest coming. And why can’t she just say lodger and have done with it? Paying guest is just nonsense, isn’t it? If you’re a guest you don’t pay, and if you pay you’re not a guest. That’s all there is about it, and I shall just go on saying lodger. Every time I meet them I shall say it- ‘How is your lodger today, Miss Elaine? How do you like your lodger, Miss Gwyneth?’ I wish I had said it to Elaine this morning. The lodger comes this afternoon, and they are going to give a party for her to meet everyone tomorrow. Gwyneth is taking the bus into Dedham this afternoon to buy cakes for it, and Elaine is going to make drop scones. And He will go, and I suppose you will too, but my mother won’t, because I shall make her lie down on her bed and rest. And I think it would be a good plan if I locked her in.”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“I do not think I should do that. It might alarm her very much.”

Something like a shadow went across Jennifer’s face. Her imagination had been pricked. She was thinking of being shut in-alone-in the dark. The scene sprang into view-hands beating on a locked door, shaking a fastened window-a voice sending out terrified screams-and at first they would be loud, and then choking, and then just a horrid whisper. And loud or soft, nobody would hear them. She stared at Miss Silver with dilated eyes and said in a shuddering voice,

“No-no-I won’t lock her in. Nobody ought to be locked in -really. It’s wicked!”