Florence and Giles by John Harding

Author:John Harding
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780007315062
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18

It was a strange party we made, carriaging toward town. John, usually unflappable, telling the horse to gee up and giving him some whip, which he never normally did; Miss Taylor, maintaining a frosty silence, still annoyed by my presence, or if not exactly by that, then that Giles’s need seemed to be first and foremost for me, which of course would not at all suit her plans; and Giles moaning and whimpering like a stuck pig. Indeed, he so relentlessed the manifestations of his agony that I caught myself thinking that maybe, by some strange coincidence, he really did have toothache and that it was no longer an act. The boy had a talent for melodrama, I’ll give him that, gasping out solemn imprecations that if he should die we should not mourn him but remember him only as he had been one summer’s day in the garden a couple of years back, a day that seemed so very special to him, that the fact I had no recollection of it any more than any other day regretted me quite. Giles so tragicked I was quite sure he had forgot the whole thing was an act, which difficulted me in the extreme not to laugh out loud.

So spurred on by Giles’s noises was John that we galloped into town. One thing struck me as strange as we entered the beginnings of Main Street, that Miss Taylor lowered her veil. Why should she do that, I wondered, why should she not want her face to be seen? Of course, Miss Whitaker had oftened to town, once-a-weeking there, and it wondered me now that if Miss Taylor were indeed one and the same as our first governess, whether there were not someone here whom she feared might recognise her, as though perhaps that hint of familiarity I had found in her expression might even more apparent to others. I had no time to dwell on the thought because we roared to a halt outside Mr Field’s surgery and, after tying up the horse, John carried Giles inside, so maintaining the idea that the inflammation had spread from his mouth down to his legs and unabled him to walk.

Mr Field’s timid little wife, who acted as his desk clerk and nurse, bade us be seated in his waiting room, a dingy collection of armchairs covered in scuffed red velvet (so as not to show the blood, Giles had insisted when we came before) that smelt of a potent brew of tobacco and chemicals and had the immediate effect of making me want to be sick. ‘He won’t keep you a moment,’ said Mrs Field. ‘He has a complicated piece of drill work to perform upon another patient and he is right in the middle of it.’ In confirmation the whine of a drill started up, at which Giles immediately quieted, then began noising again but this time not in the tune of agony but in fear.

‘You know what, Miss Taylor, my tooth seems much better,’ he said, weaking her a smile.

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