The Quivering Tree by S. T. Haymon Read Free Book Online Page B

standing in the open doorway, had not got in first, in a voice veined with a familiar undertone of mockery: ‘Well, I must say! What a little pig!’
    Miss Locke taught history. This was particularly apt since she was the only person I had ever seen whose forehead and nose, in profile, were precisely in line, the way they were in gods and goddesses from Ancient Greek temples. Presumably the Ancient Greeks thought such a profile a sign of beauty. In my judgement, for what it was worth, whilst it may have been OK on gods and goddesses fresh from Mount Olympus, it was pretty off-putting in a human being, especially one in authority. It made Miss Locke look censorious, which I didn’t think she was, particularly. The thing, however, that made her face a difficult one to come to a decision about was that the two halves, upper and lower, did not really belong together. They reminded you of the faces in those jokey books which have their pages divided horizontally, making it possible to combine brows and chins you would never ordinarily dream of putting together.
    The Ancient Greeks, I am pretty sure, would not have been best pleased with a classical brow and nose that modulated, as the history mistress’s did, via a small round mouth filled with small teeth, to a chin that pointed forward and upward, a little like Punch.
    Just the same, met by night in the dining-room of Chandos House, slim-armed in her sleeveless shift of greeny-blue, she was undeniably beautiful, holding a candlestick with a lighted candle in it and the light thrown up on to her face. It made her eyes deep-set and mysterious and contrived to etch a honey-coloured aureole round the edges of her short brown hair. Unusually for schoolmistresses of that time, Miss Locke wore her hair cut like a man’s. Not exactly an Eton crop, which was beginning to go out of fashion anyway, it looked so ugly from the back, but more like something you might expect to see on a faun or a satyr, or a poet of the Romantic period. The hair, curly, with a natural spring to it, fitted the shape of her head like a cap, one that stuck to the edges of her face as if carved there. Her exposed ears were unusually small, the kind Ethel M. Dell and Peg’s Paper , I shouldn’t be surprised, meant by shell-like, not meaning a crab or even a whelk, I felt sure, but something dainty and delicate not to be picked up on Cromer beach. Had I thought about it, or been a bit older, I might have guessed that Miss Locke must be a history teacher with exceptionally good qualifications for Mrs Crail to put up with a hair-do like that.
    I knew that I was much too old to cry, but cut off from my walnut in mid-bite, I had no alternative. I howled: burst out that I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast and not much even then: that I wasn’t a pig, whatever she said, just dying of hunger, that was all.
    â€˜Be quiet, you little fool!’ Miss Locke ordered. ‘You’ll wake up Mrs Benyon.’
    She had only to command once. Then, with a finger to her lip, she led the way into the kitchen where, whilst I watched incredulously, half-certain it was all a dream, she opened the larder door, took a loaf out of an earthenware crock set on the floor, and brought it to the scrubbed deal table where a bread board and bread knife waited as if against just such an emergency. The housekeeper’s snores continued with unabated gusto as Miss Locke cut two slices, real doorsteps. Putting back the loaf, taking care to replace the lid of the crock without noise, she returned to the table with a jar of strawberry jam, which she spread generously over the bread.
    â€˜Won’t Mrs Benyon notice?’ I whispered.
    â€˜Her?’ Contemptuously, barely keeping her voice down: ‘She’ll think she ate it in her sleep. Let me see now –’ Miss Locke pondered, more to herself than to me. ‘We’d better not take a plate –’ Then: ‘I