The Door That Led to Where by Gardner Sally

Author:Gardner, Sally [Gardner, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Teen & Young Adult, Sword & Sorcery, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
ISBN: 9781471401107
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Published: 2015-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

AJ wondered if Clerkenwell Green had ever been green. The houses surrounding it and the church all looked pretty enough but quite where green came in he didn’t know. Several hens had escaped from a backyard and were being chased by a boy with a stick; horses clip-clopped past. Most people seemed to walk with a purpose. AJ, being early, dawdled, looking in the shops. One caught his fancy. It sold nothing but birds. A raven stood in a cage, pecking at the bars; there were singing canaries, even a nightingale, and in a dark corner were two magpies. The shop owner perched on a stool, covered in white dust, looking as if all he was missing was his feathers.

‘Are they all for sale?’ AJ asked him.

‘Every single one of them,’ he said. ‘All trained, all as polite as a bird can be.’

The church clock struck a quarter to four and it was already dark, the streets emptying of people, with only dim lamps lighting the way. When he returned to Mrs Furby’s, he decided, he would treat himself to a hackney carriage.

He hoped that he might be able to see Miss Esme alone, although, according to the book on manners, such a meeting was out of the question. He didn’t fancy telling Miss Esme about Nonsuch in Mrs Meacock’s presence.

He knocked on the Daltons’ door feeling more nervous than he thought he should.

A manservant let him in and said that Mrs Meacock wasn’t yet home. AJ handed over his hat, coat and muffler but wasn’t sure if he should keep the grey leather gloves, especially as he’d gone to all the trouble of buying them. Shouldn’t he at least show them off? The manservant was impatient and reluctantly AJ let him take the gloves as well. The house was bitterly cold and he was surprised to find he could see his breath indoors more clearly than he could outside.

‘Mr Jobey.’

He looked up. Miss Esme stood on the stairs, wearing a black dress more stylish than anything she had worn before.

‘Please come up and warm yourself,’ she said.

The drawing room felt like a mausoleum.

Miss Esme stood by the fire.

‘I’m afraid I’m early,’ AJ said. ‘I wanted to see you alone.’

She blushed. He hadn’t seen a girl blush like that since Year Nine when Kiely Scott’s knickers fell down in the playground.

AJ felt awkward. All the easy conversation of their last meeting had gone. The house felt as heavy as nightmares – not a place AJ wanted to stay in long. The drawing room was oppressive, the furniture judgmental, the mantelpiece, the pictures, the ornaments overbearing. It appeared to him that at any moment Miss Esme would be crushed by their weight.

He was at a loss as to what to say. The tick of the clock seemed to swallow all possible topics of conversation. There was an uncomfortable silence; it was as if they hardly knew one another.

‘Is your mother in?’ he asked.

‘My mother? She died in a madhouse. My father was quite sure I too would end up there.

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