The Devil Walks by Fine Anne

Author:Fine, Anne [Fine, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781446478172
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-07-06T21:00:00+00:00

So I picked up the pen and pulled my rickety little table across to the window to catch the light. I fetched my tray and ate my good fresh hunk of bread, and drank my frothing milk so I would seem to be a simple boy who noticed nothing and settled down obediently to do an uncle’s bidding.

And since I knew he might reach out – even in jest – to read what I had written, I picked my words with care. I wrote about the journey and the rolling downs. I tried to describe High Gates without a mention of the spiders and the dust. I told about the captain’s shock of white hair on his youthful frame, but not a word about the way he’d startled me with all his savage questions about my mother’s life. I told of the badger sett and the burned oak, then sucked the end of my pen and, fearing that Mrs Marlow would worry that there was no one in this house to care for me as she had done, I wrote of Martha and how I’d helped her peg out the kitchen cloths, and how I planned to fix her washing lines more firmly to the wall.

And then, at last, I wrote the only thing I truly wanted to tell them: how much I missed the happy hours in their company. I sent my love to all, then I laid down my pen, thinking so warmly of this family who truly loved me and had made the effort to introduce me to the world and make me smile and treat me plainly and honestly, without recourse to secrets and silence.

Folding the letter, I wrote the direction carefully, then put it in my pocket, where it sat while I unpacked my carpet bag and laid things out with sour thoughts of making life a little easier for those who spied on me.

Then I sat twiddling my thumbs until a surge of restlessness drove me down to the empty drawing room. To my unhappy eyes the book shelves seemed filled with nothing but the leaden histories of pompous men. Boredom and the sheer mustiness of the room combined to make me lift the latch of the French doors and walk out on the terrace to kick at weeds and peer in cracked and empty urns.

And see that selfsame gardener watching again.

Now irritation spurred me into action. Drawing the letter from my pocket, I strolled across the lawn towards a wooden bench, as if all my attention was on the paper in my hand and he’d no need to play his usual game of sloping away into the shadows. But, just as I went past him, I swung round, demanding, ‘When will your curiosity be satisfied? Am I so strange? Have I two heads, or five arms, that you should be forever gawping at me?’

To my surprise, the gardener broke into a broad smile.

That irritated me even more. ‘Now I amuse you?’

‘No, no!’ He tried to set his face more soberly.

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