Chapter 2 #2
“Mmm. Well. Nobody starves in my kitchen, no matter what hour they come in.” I followed her out of the kitchen and down a hallway, then through two doors and up a staircase.
I couldn’t follow the twists and turns very well, and was thoroughly lost by the time we reached a door.
“Here you go. It’s clean.” She pushed the door open.
“And there’s water in the cistern, so if you turn the tap, you’ll get something.
Don’t know if I’d drink it, but it’s good enough for washing up. ”
“Thank you,” I said, lugging my suitcase into the small room. It was plain but serviceable, with an iron bedstead, a clothes press, and a stand with a basin and a tap. Cistern-fed water on demand seemed absurdly luxurious. At the school, we’d only had a hand pump. “Err … why wouldn’t you drink it?”
Mrs. Kent paused with her hand on the doorknob. “Bugs,” she said. “They get into everything.” And then she closed the door behind her and was gone.
There was a swarm of white dragonflies on the ceiling. I stared up at them, profoundly confused. Why was that there? How was that there? Had one of the girls done something to my ceiling as a prank?
The dragonflies were larger than my head, which meant that they were not native to North America, and they were evenly spaced and all facing in the same direction, which meant that they were … pressed tin tiles? Yes. Painted white.
This did not explain why they were on my ceiling.
I sat up, wondering how to even begin explaining this to the headmistress, and caught a glimpse of my suitcase sitting on the floor next to the clothes press.
Memory pushed back my disorientation and I rubbed my forehead.
Right. I’m at Dr. Halder’s residence. I’ve arrived.
I’m going to work as a scientific illustrator again.
And apparently his ceilings have tin tiles with dragonflies on them.
I felt a stab of panic that I had overslept, but a glance out the window showed that it was still quite early.
I was still on school time. The headmistress had no use for sluggards, and her definition of “sluggard” began at 6:00 AM.
Given how tired I was, I could easily have gone back to sleep until noon, but that seemed like a poor way to start my employment.
I had been too tired to wash up the night before.
Now I ran water into the basin and learned what Mrs. Kent had meant about the bugs.
A dead June bug floated on the surface of the water, green and shiny against the white porcelain.
I had no particular fear of insects, but I never liked June bugs, because of the way they fly in your face if you’re standing anywhere near a light source.
This one wasn’t going to be flying anywhere, but I still didn’t want to share the water with it.
I fished it out, sighed, and used twice as much soap as normal.
I put on one of my two good sets of clothes, then made my way downstairs, wondering what to do next.
Do I go and present myself to him? Is he even awake?
My experiences with naturalists warred with my experiences teaching.
Would Dr. Halder be pleased with my punctuality, or appalled to be bothered before breakfast?
For want of any better ideas, I made my way to the kitchen.
Perhaps Mrs. Kent could advise me. She’d been kind enough last night, even if her suggestion about marriage had bordered on offensive.
I had no plans to marry anyone. At thirty, I was officially a spinster, and it wasn’t as if one met many eligible bachelors at a girls’ school.
As a girl, I’d always assumed I would marry a naturalist and collaborate with him on scientific works.
It was almost a cliché in my father’s circles that one eventually married one’s illustrator.
Indeed, I’d met a number of wives who were clearly doing the lion’s share of the research, no matter whose name appeared on the frontispiece.
My lack of physical charms had never seemed important, because my future husband would be marrying me for my ability to properly render leaf venation.
But somehow it had never quite happened, and then Father had died and the scientific world began to drift out of reach.
I don’t think it was ever malicious. It was simply that we had come as a set, Dr. Wilson and his daughter.
If any of his old friends ever thought about me, it was probably with general goodwill.
“Oh yes, Wilson had a daughter, didn’t he?
Bit dowdy, but by god could she paint a terrestrial orchid!
” And they’d make a mental note to see what I was doing these days and then they’d see an interesting lichen and then it would be five years later.
I couldn’t even be angry. It was hard to compete with a good lichen.
I got lost twice looking for the kitchen, but eventually found the dining room.
It had high ceilings and elegant moldings.
The table that ran the length of it had no tablecloth, though the wood had been polished until it nearly glowed, even under a thin film of dust. There were silver candlesticks on the mantle, but they were beginning to tarnish.
The whole room had an air of disuse about it and the fireplace did not look as if it had been lit in months.
It reminded me uncomfortably of our home during Father’s illness, as I closed off the rooms one by one to save money.
The rooms, when I walked through them, had the same oddly hollow feel, as if the echoes took a little longer to return than they should.
Just beyond the dining room, I found a narrow door painted the same color as the walls. I pushed it open and found, unsurprisingly, the servant’s stair. The sound of clattering crockery grew louder as I descended.
“Now I know those dishes aren’t done,” Mrs. Kent said as I stepped into the kitchen. Her back was to me, sleeves shoved to her elbows. “You can’t even have done the silver yet.”
“Um,” I said. “No?”
The housekeeper twisted around, blinked at me, then laughed. “Miss Wilson! Goodness, I thought you were young Sally. Never mind the silver.”
I smiled. “Quite all right. Err—I was hoping to ask you when I should call on Dr. Halder?”
“Lord, I don’t even send his breakfast tray up until ten. He keeps late hours, unless he’s getting up early to chase bugs around.” She glanced my way. “You’ll probably be wanting breakfast though.”
“I don’t want to be a bother—”
Mrs. Kent snorted. “Feeding people’s no bother. Do you want to eat in the dining room, or here in the kitchen?”
Remembering the air of disuse in the dining room, I suspected that really would be a bother. And the notion of sitting all alone in that quiet room, while Mrs. Kent ferried food up the stairs—God, no. “I’d rather eat down here, if I won’t be in your way?”
“Not at all.” Her smile seemed a trifle more genuine, and I wondered if I’d passed a test of some sort. She pulled a cast-iron pan from a back burner of the stove and cracked a pair of eggs into it. “You always up this early?”
“Force of habit,” I admitted. “But I don’t actually need anything but coffee at this hour, if you’d rather I ate when you’re preparing the tray for Dr. Halder.”
“Pfff. Makes no never mind to me. I keep the coffee on for myself and Mr. Kent.” She poured out a mug and handed it to me.
I slid into a chair and spooned a little sugar into it.
Smiley appeared to see if he could leave some cat hair in the sugar bowl, and seemed vaguely annoyed that I wouldn’t let him.
The mug was halfway to my lips when it occurred to me that it might have worse things in it than cat hair. Where had the water come from? Would there be mosquito larvae mixed in with the coffee grounds?
It’s coffee, I told myself sternly. The water was boiled to make it. Even if there’s mosquito larvae, they’ll be … er … pasteurized. I took a sip. It tasted like coffee. Nothing wriggled against my tongue.
“Anything you particularly like for breakfast?”
I blinked at Mrs. Kent. At the school, the teachers ate the same things as the students.
(At least the junior teachers did. I had my suspicions about the headmistress.) Breakfast was oatmeal and an apple.
Sometimes there was toast, and at Christmas there were often hotcakes, but the oatmeal was eternal.
I had almost forgotten that there were other breakfast foods in existence.
“Um,” I said. “I … err … hotcakes? If you ever feel like making them?”
“I make ’em twice a week regular anyway,” Mrs. Kent told me. “Mr. Kent’s partial to them. Just eggs today though.”
“Eggs would be wonderful,” I assured her. “I love eggs.”
“Good.” She turned and slid two freshly cooked eggs onto my plate. “Bacon in a minute.”
“Bacon?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “You don’t eat bacon?”
“Oh, I would! I do, I mean. It’s just … it’s been a long time.” Truth be told, if not for tiny, mushy bits of pink that occasionally turned up in the school supper, I would have had no proof that bacon was not a hallucination of my youth.
Mrs. Kent didn’t pry. I heard a sizzle and the smell of bacon drifted through the kitchen. My stomach growled loudly and I applied myself to my eggs.
“And Dr. Halder doesn’t mind?” I asked when two thick slices of bacon landed in front of me.
“Mind?”
“That we’re eating this well.” The headmistress would have fallen into strong hysterics at the notion of the junior teachers having bacon and eggs for breakfast. Even the coffee had been more than half chicory, and the milk so watered you could read through it.
“Why should he care? He eats the same thing every day regardless.” She counted it off on her fingers.
“One poached egg, two pieces of toast, one slice of bacon, black coffee with one sugar, served at exactly ten o’clock.
He may be a tightfisted, mean-spirited old cuss, but I’ll give him this, he isn’t stingy about food. ”