Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks Read Free Book Online

still-unfinished dressing. She put a log on the small fire and wrapped a gown round her shoulders. She glanced out of the window. It was nearly noon, and already the sun seemed to be failing in its ascent of the sky, flattening into a tired ellipse that would see it subside before the day had really started. Sonia could make out her younger brother Thomas on the pond, a strong, mysterious boy who teased her more than his two years' juniority should have allowed. She licked her lips and swallowed. In an hour or so she would be meeting Mr. Prendergast and his family honourable Nottingham people, her father had informed her, manufacturers of fine lace. Mr. Richard Prendergast, their elder son, had been introduced to Sonia at her aunt's house the previous Christmas; she had had at the time no idea that it was anything other than a chance meeting, though was later aware of murmured discussions in the drawing room of Torrington House from which she made out the words 'wait a year', and saw her father emerge with the look of purse-lipped satisfaction that she recognised as his 'business done' face. She sighed and picked a plum-coloured silk dress with a tight bodice and a full skirt that gave glimpses of her slender feet, which, her mother assured her, were her best feature. How plain must I be, thought Sonia at her dressing table, that my feet are prettier than my face? She rubbed a hint of red colouring into her lips and tied her hair back with a black ribbon. Her eyes were dark and rapid, her skin was pale and prone to flushing; at the top of her cheeks minute capillaries were visible where the translucent covering of babyhood had never fully thickened into adult skin. She powdered over them and smiled at herself in the glass. Her elder brother Edgar once told her, "You're a pretty girl, Sonia', though he had, sadly, never repeated the compliment; Thomas occasionally called her the Queen of Sheba, spoiling the exotic comparison with some qualification about 'the half was not told unto me'. Her father appeared uneasy about Sonia's presence in the house, embarrassed by her woman's bust and dresses and ball invitations. Mrs. Midwinter spoke to her with the firm encouragement she showed to Amelia, the more backward of her Dalmatian bitches. Sonia went along the landing to her mother's bedroom on the south side of the house, pausing on the polished boards to knock. Mrs. Midwinter was also at her toilet, seated on an upholstered stool that her flesh overflowed in downward-pouring, silk-covered waves. "What have you got on your lips?" "Just the smallest touch of ' "Take it off, for heaven's sake. What would Mr. Prendergast think?" "What are you going to wear, Mama?" "I shall wear my black dress with the white lace at the cuff. You should go and see how Miss Brigstocke's getting along in the kitchen." Sonia grimaced. "What is she preparing?" "Sole, if the fishmonger remembered to get any. Then some consomme. I asked her for a saddle of mutton, but you know what she's like. Some fowl to follow, I think. Your father will have found her something in the game larder, if Amelia hasn't had it." "I hope the Prendergasts are good eaters," said Sonia. "They will need something after that long journey' Mrs. Midwinter rose from her stool and moved slowly over to the oak wardrobe, taking a sugar-dusted bon-bon from a saucer on the way. "Don't forget what a favour they are doing us." "I shan't forget, Mama." Sonia ran along the cold landing to her room, reluctantly removed the colour from her lips, and went down the narrow back staircase, with its powerful 100-year-old scent of lime wood, into the servants' hall. She hurried over the patterned tiles, past the butler's pantry (they had not had a butler for years) and into the cave-like kitchen, where Miss Brigstocke, angular and flushed, was leaning over a two-gallon boiling pot, prodding the contents with a long-handled spoon. "Hello, May," Sonia said to the kitchen maid, who looked up from her potato