Except that maybe the symptoms wouldn’t match up. Then, at least, I could stop fretting about Rose and the swamp cough and fret about something else.
The kitchen door groaned. It was arthritic and cranky from the flood, and it took advantage of every opportunity to complain. Red and yellow checks swam into the window glass, and I knew without turning that it was Eldric who’d entered. There was no mistaking that university waistcoat.
“I like iced buns,” said Rose, her voice deadened by the cupboard—not that her real voice has ever been what you might call lively.
“A talking cupboard!” said Eldric. “I’ve always wanted to see a talking cupboard.”
Rose would never come out of the cupboard now, not with Eldric in the kitchen. I was trapped in the Parsonage. I turned away from the reflected waistcoat to a flesh-and-blood Eldric, who quite filled up the doorway.
“I have a message for you.” Eldric nodded at me. “Your father asks if you might step into the dining room.”
“Who will care for the talking cupboard?” I said.
“I will,” said Pearl. “You goes along, miss.”
“You’ll watch her like a hawk?” I said. “A hawk that can see through cupboard doors?”
Pearl laughed and said she would. Anyway, the dining room is only twenty feet away. I’d know if Rose needed me. Rose is not one to keep her feelings to herself.
But still I had to ask. “You’re sure?”
“Us’ll get along grand, me an’ Rose.”
“Thank you.” But why should I thank Pearl? She was being paid. Anyone could stand a screaming girl if she was paid, but the sister of such a girl is never paid. I’d like to go farther than twenty feet. France would be nice, and I speak tolerable French. Or Greece, although I speak intolerable Greek, and only ancient. But if I couldn’t manage to order a glass of wine, I’d order a wine-dark sea; and I like olives; and I believe I might like squid; and I would certainly like anyplace far away from Rose.
The dining room was absolutely littered with men: Father, Mr. Clayborne, Eldric, and the surprise guest, Mr. Drury, who was also Eldric’s tutor. Men—their great boots clogging up the floor, their greedy lungs sucking up the air, their stubbly faces filling up the looking glass.
Men, I don’t like them a bit. I’m not an ordinary girl, pining after romance and a husband. May the Horrors take me if ever I grow ordinary, like Pearl!
I know what Pearl had to do to get herself that baby with Artie Miller. I know, and I don’t think much of it. Father would be astonished at what I know.
I leaned against the red damask wallpaper, which had once been so beautiful. But it was blistered and peeling now; like the kitchen door, it had never recovered from the flood.
Mr. Clayborne looked at Eldric; Eldric nodded. It was as though the Claybornes shared a silent language, which was utterly unlike the way we Larkins shared silence, which was not at all. We don’t share anything.
I supposed that Mr. Clayborne’s look meant, Go talk to the clergyman’s daughter; and Eldric’s nod meant, Well, if you insist, for he strode right over. What sort of excuse would he give for seeking me out? What sort of mask did Eldric wear?
“We didn’t have a chance to become properly acquainted this morning,” he said.
“My sister has a knack for making scenes in public.”
Eldric nodded. “My father’s mentioned Rose in his letters but speaks rather more frequently of you. He thinks you’re quite the model daughter. He mentions you whenever he gets to wishing he had a model son.”
Adults tend to view me as being mature beyond my years. I think it has partly to do with being a clergyman’s daughter, partly to do with looking after Rose, and partly to do with being rather clever. But I can’t take any credit; I’m stuck with all of it.
“A father tends to be disappointed,” said Eldric, “when his son has achieved the great age of twenty-two and failed to graduate from university.”
“You’re to continue your studies here, with Mr. Drury?”
Eldric bent toward me, his whisper-breath warm in my ear. “It’s Mr. Dreary, actually. Don’t tell him, but I’ve given him a name that suits him better. Yes, Father insists I finish my studies.”
I should love to finish my studies. I was to have gone to school in London after Father dismissed my own tutor, but in the end, I was obliged to stay in the Swampsea to care for Stepmother. Rose and Stepmother. And the worst of it is that I have only myself to blame.
“Am I to study with you?”
“Absolutely not!” said Eldric. “I can’t have you showing me up in every subject.”
Of course he couldn’t. Girls weren’t supposed to be cleverer than boys. It’s quite a good thing I don’t suffer from normal-people feelings, such as disappointment.
I felt rather than saw Eldric’s gaze. “I didn’t mean it, you know. Yes, you are to study with me, and outshine me in every subject.” Eldric smiled, a long, curling lion’s smile. “Every subject but one.”
“What subject is that?”
“Boxing!” said Eldric.
Boxing? I should love to learn to box! Not only are girls supposed to be less clever, but content to sit by the fire and spin. Father believed this, of course, but Stepmother knew the truth. She knew that learning to run a household was a waste of a girl’s time.
“This will come as a surprise to you, I know, but I have never studied boxing. I wish I’d thought to want boxing lessons. If I had, my stepmother would have seen to it, I assure you. She thought girls should study whatever they liked.”
Stepmother encouraged me in everything I loved. I used to tramp about the swamp, and I wrote lots of stupid stories. She encouraged my writing, in particular, which was kind, for now I realize that my stories were simply awful. What a relief they burnt to cinders and no one will ever read them.
“I’m so sorry about your stepmother,” said Eldric, which is something I’ve heard often these past two months and three days, but I still haven’t gotten used to it. I understand it’s not an apology, of course, but still, it sounds strange. I’m the one who should apologize. I don’t exactly blame myself for Stepmother’s death. I didn’t feed her arsenic, and it was arsenic that killed her. But I did cause her to injure her spine. She might have died from that if the arsenic hadn’t gotten to her first.
We fell silent. Eldric took to fidgeting with some fidgetyboy thing. I knew what he was thinking. In his position, I’m sure I’d be wanting to know all about Stepmother: It’s so wonderfully interesting when a person kills herself. But she didn’t, Eldric. She wouldn’t!
The gentlemen had gotten on to talking about Mr. Clayborne’s official business, which was to drain the water from the swamp. This was going to improve life in the Swampsea, at least according to Queen Anne. Less water meant more land. More land meant more crops, and more grazing for sheep and cattle. More land also meant no swamp and no swamp cough.
“Might we creep away?” said Eldric. “When Father starts talking of draining the swamp, he starts thinking he ought to put me to work, but that would be a disaster. I’d turn my shovel wrong way up, and set the water to running upside-down.”
You’d think I’d despise this great shiftless lad. Here I was, caring constantly for Rose and complaining only to myself, which is not at all satisfactory; and there he was, doing nothing and boasting of it all the while. But I liked him. That is, I liked him as much as I liked anybody.
“I’ll show you about the house,” I said. “That will please Father.”
It did, too. Father was delighted that his daughter was acting like a regular girl, playing hostess and chatting to a young man.
We set off down the corridor. The flood had been two years ago, but the cracked-plaster walls still smelled of dead water and mournful fish. The front parlor was rimmed round with windows, and in the light, I saw Eldric fidgeting with the most fascinating bits of curled wire.
“Are those paper clips?” I’d seen them in catalogs, but the pictures don’t do them justice. They’re beautiful, in an industrial sort of way.