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CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH I MEET MY CHARGES AND AM NOT TERRIBLY IMPRESSED.

I awake to birdsong so shrill I believe it is Mother screaming again.

I plunge my face into a basin of cold water. I crouch over the chamber pot, my thighs trembling under my weight as I empty my bladder.

Sitting on the bed in my open-seam drawers, my sex chafing against the woven pattern of the counterpane, I pull on my white cotton stockings, inherited from Mother. She knitted an inscription – an encouraging reminder – at the top: Withstand in the Evil .

Around my waist I tie the pockets. I fish through the calico, pulling out a button and three fingernails.

I glance out the window and spot a young housemaid in the gardens below, talking to someone outside my line of vision. She looks as if she were birthed mere moments ago, her skin soft and pink and shining as if glossed with dew. She raises her arms, gives a little twirl, emits a compact laugh. I tap at her pale head through the glass and notice, then, something under my thumbnail. I peel out a thin string of wood. Walnut, I think. I must have been scratching at the headboard in my sleep.

I turn to examine my reflection in the washstand mirror, leaning in to trace the broken blood vessels that branch across my eyelids. The Reverend used to regard them as the markings of sin. ‘Of darkness,’ he said. Mother used to scramble to conceal them with wax and powder, so that the Reverend could not spy the new ones that had sprouted over her face.

I brush my hair into submission, part it down the middle as sharply as if with a knife, and drape it over my ears. I straighten my frock and adjust the white tucker around my neckline for modesty.

Observing my clean, respectable image in the glass I open my mouth wide in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the Darkness within me, to spy it peeking out of me, slick and muscular and toothed, like a lamprey swallowed whole.

On this, my first morning at Ensor House, I think, They won’t like me . I think, They must like me . I think, They will remember me .

EVEN IN THE LIGHT of day Ensor House remains shrouded in deep Baroque hues, reminiscent of a Caravaggio vanitas, one that might feature a skull atop a table against an inky background, or side-lit under a set of rich red drapes.

The sounds of vigorous sweeping and the clanging of metal buckets dribble through the walls from the servant staircases and tunnels. I make my way through the Great Hall and pause to inspect the grand fireplace, paved with blue Dutch tiles depicting the Scriptures. In one, Isaac kneels on an altar as Abraham holds him by the hair with one hand while brandishing a knife with the other, poised to slaughter his only son upon a mountaintop. An angel, half-formed, has descended from the clouds to stay Abraham’s raised hand. I study the simplistic expression inked in blue on Abraham. He seems disappointed at having been given a task by his god only to have it wrenched from him. ( Lay not thine hand upon the lad . ‘But I want to now. I have acquired a need for it now.’)

Above the curtained passage to the kitchen, stag skulls frown from the minstrels’ gallery. Some are alabaster, others the same shade as Mother’s teeth, stained yellow from the pipe. Some are cracked like dissected maps. Some are not skulls, merely antlers, like curlicued V’s, or flying birds as drawn by children. They remind me of my childhood. Of peeling back furry flesh from wet, white bones with little grubby fingers.

THE PRIVY SQUATS as if in shame at the farthest end of the garden, its whitewashed walls peeking through an untended patch of brambles. It boasts a generous stack of newspaper squares and old envelopes. A vase of fresh flowers stares at me through dark anthers as I sit.

I wipe my backside with the obituary of one Mr Waller, who died of apoplexy whilst supping, closely observed by his wife.

I RETURN TO the house through the kitchen, which is, at this moment, deserted, almost dreamlike in its solace, for an empty kitchen is a rare sight in a house such as this. On the sprawling kitchen table lies a whole chicken, plucked bald, as spotted and sallow as an old man’s scalp, while an unshaved calf’s head bleeds onto the deal.

I lift the head with my hands, its hair prickling my palms. I put my lips to it, sigh into its cheek. ‘Good boy,’ I whisper, ‘good boy.’

When I was a child, Mother taught me to pet animals and smaller children gently by repeating this over and over. Good boy. Good girl . As I stroked their pelts, their arms, their heads. Calibrating my strength, the potential violence in my hands.

I look upon the head in my hands. The eyes still in their sockets, observing me ruefully under white eyelashes. I bite into its snout and cold flesh bursts on my tongue, plump and chewy and pink-tasting, watery liquid running down my hands and forearms and pooling into the white cuffs of my sleeves.

‘What is tha doing?!’

I spin to face the startled cook, just emerged from the larder. Squat and ginger-haired, with flesh-coloured, hazelnut-sized warts stippling her nose.

‘Oh,’ I say. A drop of something – blood, grease – lands on the floor with a plop. ‘I’m sorry, are we not allowed to eat the children?’

The cook attempts a nervous laugh. I return it, mirroring the shape of her mouth, the gurgle in her throat. But mine sounds forced, as ever, on the edge of hysteria. Her eyes fall, again, to the calf head in my hands. I gently set it on the table.

‘Don’t know what possessed me!’ I laugh.

Her scowl softens at my admission of impulsivity. ‘Can’t eat it yet,’ she explains, falling with instinctive ease into a tone she no doubt employs with particularly unintelligent members of the upper classes. ‘I ’aven’t boiled it or scraped off the ’air. The eyes an’ brains ’ave to be taken out.’

Mrs Able appears then, as if self-forming from the shadows. ‘Miss Notty, you are expected upstairs for breakfast,’ she says firmly (and quietly, of course quietly).

She does not seem to like us colluding. It is habitual for a governess to make the servants uneasy – we are above household chores, and educated, but we are still employed in the same house, by the same people. A rare species, one of several I find myself belonging to.

As Mrs Able proceeds to engage the cook in a review of the weekly menus, I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, a streak of viscous blood smearing from wrist to knuckle, and walk away.

ARRAYED ON THE SIDEBOARD in the dining-room are silver and cut-glass bowls bearing Russian caviar, as black and wet as birdshot pellets fished from the insides of a partridge.

Mr and Mrs Pounds and I serve ourselves breakfast. My role in the dining-room is to oversee the children as they dine, but the children are absent on this particular morning. In fact, their parents wearily inform me, they do not usually descend from their rooms for breakfast. I wonder if this is because they’re not expressly welcome or because they do not care to rise at the appointed time.

‘They are lazy, and spoiled,’ Mr Pounds explains good-naturedly as he sits at the table and is immediately offered his newspapers and correspondence on a silver tray.

I study his hands as they hold up a black-bordered mourning envelope – veins cross them as thickly as marble carvings.

‘We pray you have better luck at educating them on the importance of punctuality than our previous governess,’ says Mrs Pounds, lumping eggs onto her plate from a tureen on the sideboard.

‘Yes, Mrs Pounds’ appointed meal times are not to be contested,’ says Mr Pounds, crumpling the envelope without opening it. ‘At precisely half past eight the servants rush to clear the table, even if one still happens to be sitting at it.’

I smile into the sideboard, pleased that Mr Pounds already trusts me enough to asperse his wife in my presence. I slip into my seat while Mrs Pounds sits opposite and changes the subject by complaining of a draught. ‘I do hate this cold, ugly house,’ she says. ‘The house in London was much nicer.’

‘Now, now, dear. My great-uncle Harold had to die for us to inherit this place. I suggest you be grateful.’

I bite with relish into a roasted sheep’s kidney, brown and charred in spots, giving the appearance of a shrivelled scrotum. I cannot help but utter a wordless grunt of satisfaction upon swallowing.

Mrs Pounds appears irritated by my enjoyment of my breakfast, and seeking to remedy this immediately, launches into accusatory business talk: ‘Your ad assured that you are adept at instruction in English, French, writing, music, drawing, dancing, and arithmetic?’

‘And pianoforte,’ I gurgle through kidney mush.

‘We should like Andrew suitable for boarding school by the end of the year,’ Mrs Pounds says. ‘He is a bright boy. I do not consider it an unreasonable request.’

‘Drusilla’s education shall be less rigorous, of course,’ says Mr Pounds. ‘She is now of an age when she risks her fertility from the ravages of overeducation. Says so in the Times .’

I interpret this to mean Drusilla will be doing much ornamental needlework.

‘You are also to ensure the development of the children’s good moral character, of course,’ Mrs Pounds adds. ‘Be sure they say their prayers at night, and in the mornings. Be sure they can tell right from wrong. You are responsible for their souls.’

Souls, those swallowed creatures writhing in stomachs. ( O my soul . . . why art thou disquieted in me? )

‘Drusilla is developing a vanity improper for a girl her age,’ Mrs Pounds continues. ‘She talks too much of hair. With a bit of skill you should be able to steer her out of it. Perhaps brush her locks in a manner that is plain.’ She glances at my head. ‘Much like yours.’

I sense the blooming of a Darkness within Mrs Pounds. Can almost fathom it moving inside her, wrapping its grey rubber tail around her throat, squeezing her soul into submission. I wonder if it has been Mrs Pounds’ companion since birth, or if it was feared into being.

‘I suspect the gardener is making ugly floral arrangements on purpose,’ Mrs Pounds says, plucking a withered petal, triumphant at having restored the negative tenor of the conversation. Suddenly, she gasps – ‘Surely he is not implying that I am ugly –’

‘Are we growing paranoid again, dear?’ Mr Pounds asks from behind his ironed newspaper. ‘We wouldn’t want to call upon the doctor, now, would we?’

Mrs Pounds lowers her eyes, subdued by his menacing tone that borders on farcical. Within her, the Darkness is silent but growing steadily.

AFTER brEAKFAST, I wait by the window in the school-room to meet my new charges, fidgeting with my tucker, smile in place like a modest bonnet.

‘Do as I say, or I shall have you dismissed’ are the first words the boy utters, poking a finger at me and puffing out his small chest, wrapped in a robin-red vest.

His sister trails him. Among her most striking features are her name – Drusilla – like a silk shroud drawn over her at birth – and her hair, as coarse and pale and sparse as horsehair on a fly whisk.

‘I am Andrew Pounds,’ announces the little master. Rusted freckles sprinkle his strikingly long forehead like the indiscriminate spray of blood from a slit throat. Fat, dimpled hands. Barely eight and soon bound for boarding school, where he will surely be eaten alive. ‘What is your name, Governess?’

‘Winifred Notty.’

‘Miss Notty . . . May I call you Winnie?’

‘You may call me Fred.’

‘But Fred is not a lady’s name!’ says Andrew, spittle flying from his guffaw.

‘Fred is the name of the demon who lives inside me.’

‘A demon lives inside you? How big is he?’

‘We each have one inside us.’

‘And we must endeavour to tame it,’ says the little master, nodding as if he’s understood a lesson.

I survey the room in search of Drusilla, who has exited my line of vision in favour of the window-seat, where she now lounges, languid as a sick mare.

‘Dru is unimpressed with you,’ says Andrew. ‘We’ve had so many governesses. A whole procession of them.’

A procession of governesses. I can almost see them filing past, one after the other in the gardens outside, clad in black and brown and navy blue, as I look on from the window and salute them.

‘Who are you waving at?’ asks Drusilla.

‘I believe you mean qui ,’ I say.

‘Wee,’ says Drusilla.

I sigh. ‘Can you sing, at least?’

‘I am to go away to school next year,’ interrupts Andrew, ‘which means you are to be my last governess.’

‘I shall aspire to make the most of our time together,’ I say.

‘You shall tell us stories at bed-time and give us treats whenever we wish. And you must never be cross. The last governess was cross with me, and she lost her place.’

‘That’s not true,’ says Drusilla from the window-seat. ‘She left of her own accord. I suppose she just couldn’t bear us.’ She picks at something between her teeth, then sees me watching and lowers her hand into her lap.

‘I would never abandon you, children,’ I say magnanimously, kneeling to Andrew’s height to place a solemn hand upon his shoulder. ‘Unless you were to do something awful.’

Andrew looks into my eyes, his father’s smirk on his face, images of all the potential awful acts he could commit to scare me off probably racing through his underdeveloped brain. I finish: ‘Or in the event I were to do it, of course,’ and his smile falls off.

‘Darling Dru, where are our manners?’ he exclaims in a desperate bid to change a subject that now appears to frighten him. ‘We have yet to introduce Miss Notty to the rest of the family.’

‘Are there more of you?’ I ask through gritted teeth.

Andrew twists away from me so that my hand slides off his shoulder.

They lead me up to the portrait gallery on the second floor, just off the staircase. Dead relatives smile flatly or pout or frown from their frames, some atop horses. A good deal of them from atop horses. A sizable quantity of quality haunches in these frames.

Andrew hurries me along to his favourites. ‘This is Augustus Littlewood – a dreadful hunter but lovely skinner, Papa says; and Waldo Huntington and Oliver Persephone, both hanged when their stallions committed buggery.’

‘Which one laughed?’ I ask.

‘Eh?’

‘Just now, which one of them laughed?’ I am alert, the echo of a giggle dissipating in the air above.

‘They can’t laugh! They’re portraits, silly. But it was most likely Grandfather Pounds.’ Andrew gestures to the portrait of a man whose expression is smug and violent, his face framed by dark curls, the blackest of tints dotting his eyes. ‘They say he loved entertaining children. Boys in particular.’

Grandfather Pounds’ overbite protrudes from between his lips, as if he’s swallowed a pair of said boys and they are attempting to pry themselves out by their fingers.

‘It is a great honour to be on these walls,’ Drusilla says. ‘When we are older, our portraits shall be painted and hung here for all to see.’

‘Mine shall be bigger,’ says Andrew.

I smile, first at the futility of their pronouncements and then at the portraits, at face after face after face of bored, righteous indifference. I picture my own face among them, the latest addition to the Pounds lineage. I tongue the edges of my mouth, hungry.