Havisham: A Novel Read Free Page B

eat the food you put before me.’
    ‘You think I can’t choose a good cook, Madame?’
    ‘Never mind “good”. Simply a decent one would suffice.’
    ‘What gives you the right, I should like to know, to –’
    ‘In my daughter’s place I –’
    ‘We don’t know what Antoinette would have thought –’
    ‘She would not have given her approval to that woman’s being in this house.’
    They both turned and looked at me. My grandmother’s face was now as sour as a cut lemon. My father, spinning the stem of his wine glass with his fingers, seemed anxious on my account.
    Later, before our visitor left, I heard my father saying that he would appreciate it if she didn’t speak to the servants without his approval. She denied knowing what he meant.
    ‘You’ve not been asking the maids questions?’
    ‘Whatever has put that idea into –’
    ‘I’m cognisant of what goes on in my own house.’
    ‘As the maids are.’
    ‘You have been asking them –’
    ‘Antoinette would never have stood for it.’
    ‘Stood for what?’
    ‘You know very well what. Don’t taint young Catherine, do you hear me?’
    ‘I should tell you, I do not appreciate being advised how –’
    ‘I am not advising, Mr Havisham. I am demanding .’
    *   *   *
    She didn’t ever return to Satis House.
    Every now and then I would receive a note from her. I would reply, but my father insisted on seeing what I wrote to her, and having me rewrite – more concisely – if he judged so.
    I heard one of the girls say Mrs Bundy was relieved anyhow, to see the back of her, no more fancy French stuff to dish up there . And another girl laughing back, Oh Mrs Bundy’s got her own ideas what she’ll do to this place, what’s going to go into folk’s bellies.
    I knew that my grandmother wouldn’t be back, even though I wasn’t told so. Mrs Bundy walked about more amply; she had the girls running everywhere on errands – I even saw her passing through our hall with flour on her arms or a whisk in her hand. My father wouldn’t have risked offending her with another visit from my imperatorial grandmother, even if he was denying the mother of the woman he’d married and lost, and was depriving me of an acquaintanceship with my one surviving female blood relative.
    *   *   *
    I had chased my cats down to the orchard. I happened to look up and jumped when I saw someone, a boy, crouching splay-legged in the fork of a tree.
    ‘What are you doing here?’
    Then I recognised him. Mrs Bundy’s son, in new finery.
    He raised himself nonchalantly on one elbow and considered me.
    ‘I could ask you the same,’ he replied languidly. He spoke as boys do who have begun to receive an expensive education.
    ‘I asked you first.’
    He smiled.
    ‘Oh, Catherine Havisham has first say in everything, doesn’t she?’
    I glared back at him.
    ‘It’s not your garden,’ I said.
    ‘It’s not yours either.’
    ‘More mine than yours.’
    ‘ Is it?’
    ‘It’s my father’s.’
    ‘“It’s my father’s”,’ he repeated, exactly imitating my tone of voice.
    ‘Who else?’
    ‘Indeed.’
    ‘Come down from there.’
    He did eventually – taking a long time about it, and making it seem that he only pleased himself.
    He was tall, lanky, pallid, not filled-out like his mother. He still had his thin foxy face. I had never cared for the look of him, this craven interloper.
    ‘Well…?’ I said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
    ‘I just wanted to get a good look at you.’
    ‘What on earth for?’
    ‘So you’ll give me sweet dreams. When I dream of this place.’
    ‘The garden? It’s private, I told you. It’s got nothing to do with you.’
    ‘Says who?’
    ‘ I say.’
    He laughed.
    ‘So, you’re the boss, are you?’
    I snapped at him. ‘Don’t be insolent!’
    ‘Or else what –?’
    He reached up his arm, and might have been going to swing from a low branch, but he either didn’t trust his strength or didn’t care to soil