Page 6

CHAPTER V.

CONCERNING CUCKOOS, DEER, AND CHILDREN, ALIVE AND DEAD.

‘Y ou are rather fat,’ the little master says as I dress him for our walk the following morning.

‘Because I eat rather fat children,’ I reply.

He narrows his eyes as if giving the matter some thought, then his fat pink lips stretch into a broad, feral smile and I wonder what his teeth taste of.

As advised by the Ladies’ Journal , I am clothed in a ‘plain and quiet style of dress; a deep straw bonnet with green or brown veil’ (brown, in my case, as the drab colour blurs the identifying features further, obscuring my expression of unfathomable emptiness to resemble one a casual observer might mistake for solemnity).

Leaves are strewn across the grounds in hues of bile and blood. The brumal skies whip up a fierce wind, carrying the smell of rainfall from further north. We walk past the stone stables, with their yawning, arched doorways, where I spot the pretty housemaid I saw yesterday from my bed-room window. She is talking with the apprentice gardener. They stop abruptly when they see us, and the maid retreats to the kitchen, a knowing look on her face.

Andrew is slamming a stick against the tree trunks with zeal, as if trying to inflict pain upon them. Drusilla, meanwhile, is talking in a hushed monotone, almost to herself, about how she’s sure to attend this year’s Christmas ball now that she’s of age – thirteen. I glance down at Drusilla’s bodice, where her nipples – let alone her scant bosom – barely seem to press against the fabric, which is positively gaping.

We cross an old stone bridge overlooking a verdant swan pond. Two mute swans glide across the water towards us. Their plumage is pure alabaster, but their beaks – which they open and close at us, entreating us to feed them – are a shock of bloody orange, and serrated, like garden shears sewn to their faces with thick black thread.

On the other side of the bridge, Andrew drops his stick and cries: ‘Look, there’s a nest in that tree! A nest with eggs in it!’

We approach the nest, admire its sturdy composition of spit and mud and leaves and one maroon ribbon weaved through the twigs. Within the nest lie three eggs, cold to the touch. Abandoned, presumably, by their mother, and doomed to remain unhatched.

‘One is a cuckoo’s egg,’ I say. ‘See how two eggs are blue, and the speckled one is a shade of brown?’

‘The brown one is ugly,’ says Andrew. He pauses. ‘And fat.’

‘The cuckoo is a brood parasite,’ I explain, stroking the egg with a reverence that borders on fervour. ‘The female lays her eggs in other birds’ nests. When the cuckoo chick hatches, it kills its nest-mates. They have the urge’ – I say this, and my voice inevitably lowers with gravity – ‘to kill as soon as they are born.’

I pluck a blue egg from the nest and crack it open in my palm, squeezing the yolk in a clenched fist, shards of eggshell and what looks like sputum oozing between my fingers.

We continue our walk.

‘We used to be more chicks, too,’ Andrew says, pensive. ‘There were five between me and Dru and another five after, but they all died. I survived,’ he claims, beating his sternum with his fist.

‘That makes twelve children in all,’ I calculate. ‘Dash my wig, that’s a lot of Pounds children.’

‘Well,’ says Andrew, ‘I’m the sole male heir.’

He trips on my boot and stumbles forward. I catch him. ‘Careful,’ I say, my voice fringed with patience.

‘Cousin Margaret always says: “It is much better to have five hundred pounds a year than all the Pounds in the world a year”,’ Drusilla says.

I am really starting to warm to Cousin Margaret.

‘Hush now, women, what’s that?’ Andrew shouts, throwing out his arms to halt our progress. A short distance ahead, in a bramble-dotted clearing, lies a dead roe deer.

‘Its tail has been cut off!’ Andrew says dramatically.

‘Roe deer have no tails, you little idiot,’ I say through a loving smile.

We approach the deer until we are so close that we can discern the individual ash-coloured hairs on its back, which are growing over its richer, reddish summer coat. I kneel beside it. It moves – almost imperceptibly, a trembling of black lashes over blacker eyes, deep and liquid as buckets of pitch. Slowly, ever so slowly, I feel upon the ground with my hand for the nearest rock.

Andrew blinks. ‘I think it’s ali –’

As if offended by the uncertainty, the deer barks at us – a harsh, throaty bray not dissimilar to the cry of a woman in despair.

I smash the rock upon the doe’s head. I bring the rock down over and over again, my arms burning with fatigue, until the creature’s eyes are red, until they are no longer distinguishable from its snout, until the muscles in my shoulder scream, as the children stare, mouths agape, blood peppered on Andrew’s breeches, flecks of it on Drusilla’s rapidly blinking face.

‘When you come across an animal in pain, the merciful thing to do is to kill it,’ I say, setting the rock down with a gentleness reserved for fine china.

The children look down at the deer, at its insides mottling the rock, worm-like threads of brain on my dress.

‘But it didn’t . . . look to be in any pain . . .’ Andrew says feebly.

‘Oh, but it was,’ I say, ‘It was.’ I wipe blood from my cheek with the back of my hand. ‘All living creatures are.’

AT LUNCH, the children stare dumbly, eyes glazed, as their parents and I gobble up our venison pies. I am sure I can taste – among the onion and the carrots and the sauce of red wine and Port – a slick, salty black eyeball.

Preposterous, of course, dear reader. I fear I am succumbing to elaborate flights of fancy. I must not let that happen. This shan’t be like the other times.