The Touch by Colleen McCullough

Author:Colleen McCullough [McCullough, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, General, Sagas
ISBN: 9780671024192
Google: uhA6MwDIAyAC
Amazon: B007CKLIY8
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2003-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

London, November 1884

Dear Auntie Ruby,

I am in trouble with my tutor, Mr. Fowldes, who has reported me to Daddy yet again. My latest crimes are: displaying no interest in deportment, social graces and religion; aspiring to calculus; cheeking him by proving that his mathematics were wrong and mine right—and gloating over it; saying “Oh, shit!” when I upset the inkwell; and deriding him for believing that God created the world in seven days. Now that’s shit, Auntie Ruby.

He dragged me to Daddy’s library by one ear and poured out my crimes in a terrible temper, then, having rid himself of that, he gave Daddy this enormous lecture on raising girls to think they can compete with men. God, he said, forbade that. Daddy listened solemnly, then asked him if he’d mind releasing my ear. Of course Mr. Fowldes had quite forgotten that he was still hanging on to it, so he let it go. Then Daddy asked me what I had to say for myself, which outraged Mr. Fowldes. I told Daddy that I was just as good as any boy at mathematics and mechanics, that my Greek, Latin, French and Italian were better than Mr. Fowldes’s, and that I was fully entitled to make my own judgments about Napoleon Bonaparte, even if they did extol him more than they did the silly old Duke of Wellington, who couldn’t have won Waterloo without the Prussians, and was a mediocre prime minister anyway. In Mr. Fowldes’s book, the British are never wrong and the rest of the world is never right, especially the French and the Americans.

Daddy listened, then sighed and dismissed me. I don’t know what he said to Mr. Fowldes, but it must have been more in my favor, since Mr. Fowldes has stopped trying to turn me into a girl. I was hoping that he’d send Mr. Fowldes packing and find me a tutor more like Mr. Stephens, but he didn’t. Later on he told me that, as I went through life, I’d run up against a lot of men like Mr. Fowldes, so I may as well get used to them now. Ha ha, I got my own back! I short-sheeted his bed and smeared it with treacle. He was furious! That led to my first caning—it smarts, Auntie Ruby, I can tell you. But I just lifted my top lip at him and refused to so much as wince. I was tempted to tell him to get fucked, but even Daddy doesn’t know I know that word, so I thought I’d better not. I’ll tell him on my last day under his tutelage. I can hardly wait to see the look on his face. You don’t think he’ll be so shocked that he’ll have an apoplexy and die, do you?

I’d far rather be in Kinross with Mr. Stephens and my pony, and that’s the truth. However, Mum’s friend Dr. Gower took me to see a museum of anatomical specimens, just the best treat I’ve ever had in my life.

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