Havisham: A Novel Read Free

only ever saw a girl with a brow furrowed in concentration, a too straight line for a mouth, a nose which threatened towards the aquiline, and a look in her eyes which was articulating a fear of solitude.
    *   *   *
    My father ensured that I should lack for nothing material.
    Clothes and shoes. Books, dolls. A wooden barrow for the garden, and a set of nurseryman’s tools. A leather horse on which to ride side-saddle. A box dulcimer, a recorder. A brush and comb of tortoiseshell inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Two oriental cats, which I called Silver and Gold.
    I forget everything, because there was so much.
    My father must have supposed that no other child could have had a happier time of it than I did. He showered me with gifts, which he didn’t consider treats but things I had a perfect right to enjoy. But even amplitude and generosity pall. When I was by myself, I had a finite amount of imagination to help me play; when another child was brought along, I became possessive, only because I was afraid of having to reveal my embarrassment at owning so much.
    *   *   *
    Mrs Bundy was our cook. She had come to us when I was very small. Her repertoire was limited, but my father preferred it to the more rarefied fare my mother had favoured.
    To look at, she was striking rather than attractive. Wide eyes, a small tilted nose, and a large mouth that reached up into her cheeks when my father made her smile about something. A mane of thick brown hair which she wore rolled up and pinned behind, and was forever re-pinning. Large breasts, so that her apron usually carried a dusting of flour or whatever her chest came into contact with. She also had the curious habit of stepping out of her shoes when the kitchen grew too hot for her and walking about in bare feet, as if she considered herself mistress of this domain.
    *   *   *
    Mrs Bundy spoke about me. She told my father things he couldn’t have known otherwise: about my talking to the workers’ children, about disposing of my lunch vegetables in the fire or out of the window.
    It was none of her business. Angry with her, I told my father I knew who was telling him.
    ‘It’s her .’
    ‘Catherine –’
    ‘Isn’t it?’
    ‘I don’t want to discuss –’
    ‘She’s just our cook.’
    ‘Don’t speak of Mrs Bundy so dismissively.’
    ‘But she has no right –’
    ‘D’you hear me, Catherine?’
    He was taking her side – yet again.
    Sometimes on my constitutional I passed where she lived.
    *   *   *
    She came from the other end of Crow Lane to ourselves, but not from the most deprived part of it as I might have expected. Being a cook in a rich man’s house, she must have managed to feed herself at her employer’s expense, certainly to look as wholesomely nourished as she did.
    There was a boy too, a year or so younger than myself. I had glimpses of him, grown a little taller every time, but just as pale – he lacked his mother’s robustness – and just as nosy as I went on my way, accompanied by my maid for that afternoon. On one occasion I made a face at him, and the boy pretended to be affronted; but I realised too late that my mistake was to acknowledge him and to show him what he made me feel, and so I’d handed him the advantage of that moment.
    I always had lunch on Sunday with my father, following our return from the cathedral.
    Mrs Bundy would linger in the dining room, after we’d been served, after my father had been asked if everything was to his satisfaction. It seemed to me that it wasn’t her place. Several times I would notice my father’s eyes moving off her, and Mrs Bundy’s eyes narrowing as she looked at me, as if he was seeking a second opinion from her about me. And just as much as on the other account, it seemed to me that the woman exceeded herself.
    *   *   *
    Mrs Bundy had the task of supervising my other meals in my mother’s old sewing room.
    ‘My food’s not to your liking, miss?’
    ‘I’m not