Girl Reading by Katie Ward

Author:Katie Ward
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9781451657326
Publisher: Virago
Published: 2011-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Unknown

For Pleasure, 1916

Ivy clings to Arnault. Not Arnault Lodge or Arnault House, just Arnault, according to the plaque. Occasionally in conversation, Old Arnault. And once, Monsieur Arnault, but thankfully that did not stick. The house has been so named since before Cynthia Everard’s childhood summers and is now hers. Arnault has seen Cynthia at her happiest. Seen her leaving wet footprints across the floor after a dip in the Lagoon (not really a lagoon), has seen the owl pellets and snails and pinecones and wildflowers collected and displayed on this very table for—for whatever purpose was in her mind on that particular day. Seen Cynthia in new hats. Heard her recite poetry, complain of stomachache, lie about how she lost five bob she was given as a present, cry when she was stung by a wasp. Is the Cynthia Everard of today recognizable as the same girl?

Cynthia the intellectual. Cynthia the drab academic. Cynthia Everard, editor of Professor Norman Creegan’s Selected Writings (a work in progress), and, if his son, Charles, has his way, Creegan’s biographer. The son argues that no one else living understands his father’s works better than she does. She agrees. And that nobody within his professional sphere was as liked by him as Cynthia. Entirely probable. And if she does not consent to do it, there shall never be a definitive biography. On this Cynthia is noncommittal but suspects it to be the truth.

Let me work on his legacy first, Charles, she said, postponing the day when she will have to refuse, ensuring for the present she has access to her mentor’s essays lecture notes letters scribbles. The son cannot be accused of withholding. No. She is grateful for that. But the message about not commencing the biography has not been listened to, and she must have in her kitchen every paper and publication Professor Creegan ever owned in his eighty-eight years of life. Piles of it. Towers of it. Work and life, life and work mixed together. By teasing out the components of one, she will necessarily tease out the components of the other. It is a tactic and it may be working, for Cynthia finds herself drawn into travel journals, lists, theater programs, appointment diaries, correspondence with his mistress; even the guides to angling and rambling hold some fascination because she only saw him indoors at the college—imagine the old man with a fishing rod or a walking stick! There was more to him then than mere philosophy, and that alone would fill twenty volumes. But why must he cram every space with his ideas? Why whole paragraphs written in the margins of a letter from the bank? Why whole synopses written across the sky in Pleasant Highland Walks: A Guide for the Adventurous Gentleman? Why is she starting to see coded notations in his diaries that suggest he was considering amending, if not reversing, one of his most renowned theories? The tantalizing glimpse of an unpublished essay developed over not less than nine

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