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CHAPTER XIII.

IN WHICH THE PORTRAITS IN THE GALLERY ARE DEFILED, EYES ARE STOLEN, AND MY SKULL IS MEASURED.

T here is much commotion when several of the faces in the gallery appear swapped. The canvases, in some cases hundreds of years old, have been cut up and pasted with rabbit-skin glue onto other portraits. Some of the eyes are missing.

‘But ma’am, why would anybody take the eyes?’ asks Mrs Able, each of her own staring at a different portrait. A servant stands precariously on the uppermost rung of a wooden ladder and lowers the defiled paintings one by one.

Drusilla sighs as if greatly aggrieved by the desecration of the paintings, most likely in solidarity with her new admirer’s line of work (for which she has acquired an abrupt taste, of late, employing terms like ‘sfumato’ with condescending insouciance). Andrew, meanwhile, picks at his canines with a gilded toothpick.

‘However will we fix this in time for Christmas?’ Mrs Pounds agonizes, wringing her hands.

‘Do not fret, ma’am, the holiday is still well over a month away,’ the august butler says, hands behind his back. ‘And we have plenty of portraits to replace them with in the upper rooms.’

The delicacy with which the faces have been excised leads Mrs Pounds to suspect the hand of a woman. She accuses one of the housemaids because of the odd way she once rearranged the pillows on a drawing-room couch. Mrs Pounds loudly regrets not dismissing her then, for no servant with creative aspirations will ever be a good one.

The sixteen-year-old maid is swiftly convicted of vandalism and the theft of at least seven pairs of oil-painted eyes, and is shipped to Van Diemen’s Land to plait straw at the workhouse.

‘The extent of her forethought chills me so, I cannot fathom it,’ Mrs Pounds says, arms crossed, as she examines the Earl of Wort’s face on the body of Lady Francesca Pounds. ‘It leads one to wonder whether she did it all in one night, without rest, or whether she had been at it for a while, night after night, while we all slept,’ she murmurs. ‘I don’t know which is worse.’

MISS LAMB, IT TURNS OUT, is greatly unmoored by the unexpected and harsh manner of her colleague’s dismissal and exile. When I ring for a cup of tea in the school-room I am confused, at first, believing she is sniffing deeply into her handkerchief or strangling herself with it before I realize she is weeping.

‘There, there,’ I say with diffidence.

I must take care when expressing tenderness for Miss Lamb – indeed, for anyone – as I have on occasion allowed myself to get carried away by my emotions and have embraced others a little too rambunctiously, until they pulled at my arms in distress. So I merely pat Miss Lamb’s shoulder, strong and round under the folds of her uniform, and am pleased to see she does not retreat. The next time I touch her – caressing her back with my palm – I allow my hand to linger.

‘Thank thee, Miss Notty,’ she says. ‘I should get back to work or Mrs Able will box my ears.’

Your beautiful ears , I do not say.

WHEN I RETURN to the house after a stroll with the master, my cheeks whipped ruddy by the moorland winds, Mrs Pounds descends on me like dark rainfall. ‘There will be no need to join us for dinner tonight, Miss Notty,’ she says. ‘You may dine in the nursery with the children.’

‘Of course,’ I say, lowering my head with deference.

‘Nonsense, dear,’ Mr Pounds’ rich baritone booms from the entrance, behind me. ‘Miss Notty will dine with us as she does every night. Won’t you, Miss Notty?’

‘Of course,’ I say, lowering my head with deference.

Mr Pounds is approaching the staircase when Mrs Pounds interjects – ‘Miss Notty, did you not just tell me how tired you were from your recent walk around the grounds with Mr Pounds?’

‘I’ – I squint, studying the clues on Mrs Pounds’ face (firmly set mouth, wide eyes, my God how very wide her pupils, she must stop with the belladonna, she’ll go blind) – ‘yes,’ I say.

‘Miss Notty,’ Mr Pounds calls, almost bellowing, from the bottom of the staircase as he grips the banister, ‘were you not just saying to me on our walk around the grounds how very ravenous said walks made you?’

‘I,’ say I, looking from Mr to Mrs Pounds. ‘Yes.’

Mr Pounds begins his climb up the stairs – ‘Better get to it, then; the dinner bell is imminent!’ – and Mrs Pounds does not respond, stabbing me in a thousand different ways with her eyes as I tiptoe past her, my frock rustling against hers as I squeeze my way to the stairs.

OVER DINNER, MR POUNDS, the magenta in his face flourishing after a few glasses of wine, discusses the controversial Factory Act, implemented to improve conditions for children toiling in the factories. Mr Pounds praises the security of working children. ‘Children’ – he swallows a belch – ‘must be protected.’ (At least two hundred under ten died in his own mills before the act was introduced.)

I wonder what all the fuss with children is about. They’re only people, albeit smaller. Why care about people when they’re small if no one cares about them when they’re grown? Society has decided, in recent years, that children are precious and worthy of being spared the slightest suffering. Are they truly so deserving of mercy? They’ve fought for their place on Earth less zealously than the mongrel of Hopefernon’s butcher which, with one eye, half a tail and no testicles, managed to eke out an existence until its life was ended under the hoofs of four carriage horses.

‘Miss Notty, what do you think?’ Mr Pounds asks.

‘Children,’ I begin. ‘Can we honestly proclaim that they’re any better than their insufferable adult counterparts?’

Silence. The footman’s eye twitches. Mrs Pounds’ mouth is open so wide I believe I could fit my fist in it.

‘I only jest, of course,’ I say. ‘I love children. They are the very reason I am in your household. Bless them.’

Mr Pounds chortles heartily, displaying the half-chewed food on his thin purple tongue. ‘Bless them!’ he exclaims, choking on his drink, red rivulets of wine curling down his neck.

AFTER DINNER, MR POUNDS measures my head in the library, running his fingertips over my skull, gracelessly fumbling with a wooden-and-brass craniometer.

On the shelves sit row upon row of books sporting rich burgundy and caramel spines with gilded print, bound in Morocco leather so fragrant the goat wafts off them onto the dark serge of my dress.

Seated patiently in a creaking chair by the fire while Mr Pounds towers over me, I blink into the distance, a vacant smile still in place from when I put it on that morning.

‘Miss Notty, your skull appears to possess impossible angles . . . the numbers seem to vary every time I measure you, as if something were undulating under your skin!’

Rubbing the perspiration off his eyelids, chewing on his impeccably pomatum-stiffened moustache, Mr Pounds jots down the measurements in his journal, blotting them with the sweat that pools out of his shirt cuffs. He stares at the numbers, bewildered.

I peer at the journal, at his handwriting. Andrew: Weak organ of cautiousness . Drusilla : Weak everything . I squint along the row of inked columns, spot the name of the previous governess. Chastened, I look away. I assure myself it is his profound affection for the art of phrenology, rather than for her, what caused him to measure her skull as he is now measuring mine.

‘Ah,’ Mr Pounds says, removing the craniometer. ‘I see now. It is quite remarkable, Miss Notty. Quite remarkable indeed. We seem to possess the very same skull! The curve of the forehead, the identical dent on the left temple. According to the science, there never were two persons better suited.’

His Darkness smells like briar and molasses and tobacco, like the inside of a smoking-pipe bowl. I believe we could perhaps be quite happy together.

THAT NIGHT, in my bed-room, I write Winifred Pounds repeatedly on a slip of paper, then eat it. Winifred Pounds, Winfred Pounds, Winifred Pounds.