Havisham: A Novel by Ronald Frame Read Free Book Online

pastures new .
    *   *   *
    A dome showed over the tops of the trees.
    The view cleared along the driveway.
    The house appeared. Slab-sided, octagonal. Raised on a knoll. Red creeper on the walls. French doors stood open.
    *   *   *
    They were waiting for me. Lady Chadwyck, well preserved and dressed at least fifteen years younger than the age I guessed her to be, and smiling sweetly.
    She had two daughters and a son, lined up in the portico to meet me.
    Isabella, the eldest at nineteen, was the more attractive girl, with a commanding manner. Her brother William, home from Cambridge, had heroic good looks. Marianna was darker, and smaller, and more reticent. A plain-featured and soberly dressed cousin from Northumberland, Frederick, was at the same Cambridge college as William, and lived with them at Durley Chase in the vacations.
    The memory of Arthur that had accompanied me on the journey fell away as I succumbed to the warm words of welcome, their easy smiles and their fine manners. After only a few minutes I felt I was giving myself to them: like some flower that’s had a dark time growing, opening at last to the sun.
    *   *   *
    They had retained their childhood nicknames. Isabella was Sheba, as in ‘Arrival of the Queen of ’, with a talent for making dramatic entrances. Marianna was Mouse, because that was her way. William was contracted to an amiable mumble, W’m (I was less sure why; he spoke quite clearly, and had an open, confident manner).
    Frederick wasn’t called that, but instead Moses, after Moses Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield . Goldsmith’s Moses was the second son, not very bright, and yet a pedant; sent to the fair to buy a horse, he was talked into spending the money on a gross of green spectacles. Cousin Frederick (a third son) was the cleverest of our group, by their say-so, and even if he was inclined to be pedantic, the name didn’t seem to fit at all.
    ‘That’s the point,’ Isabella said. ‘Moses Primrose wouldn’t have complained. And neither does Frederick, ever. So, that’s the connection, you see.’
    Quite frankly, I didn’t see. I could tell why modest, restrained Marianna was Mouse; Moses in the Bible was a figure of some passion and vehemence, while this Moses in clerical black seemed forbiddingly introverted, certainly compared to either Sheba or W’m.
    But I felt I wasn’t entitled yet to question the Chadwyck family lore.
    *   *   *
    I would wake in a golden glow, early sunshine through the new yellow damask of my bedroom curtains. I felt the soft dense mass of duck feathers in the pillow beneath my head and inside the new coverlet.
    Comfort and refinement. (This one room had been refurbished for my coming, Sheba told me. I couldn’t fail to notice the signs of hard usage elsewhere in the house, but that was as charming to me as the freshness of my bedroom.)
    A housemaid came in to stir the fire and bank it up, and then – when I’d given my consent – to open the curtains. She returned with bubbling hot water for my ablutions, and a service of tea presented on a tray.
    Might she lay out my clothes?
    Yes, of course.
    She worked very quietly, but it wasn’t a petulant silence as Biddy’s sometimes was at home. It was as if she were trying to shade into my surroundings, and often I did forget she was there, and was startled when she took her leave of me, as if one of the pieces of furniture had mysteriously come to life.
    Once she’d gone I sat for a while by the window.
    There was dew on the grass, and fox trails. Swifts swooped low, criss-crossing. The trees gathered serenity into themselves.
    At home I would already have been hearing the first bustle out in the yard. There I could never be quite alone with my thoughts. Here stillness reigned, with only the rustle of coals in the grate and the tiny scrabbling of a mouse behind the wainscot to momentarily interfere, and hardly even that.
    *   *   *
    Out of term time Moses helped me