A Proper Education for Girls (25 page)

Alice blinked. “What lady?”

“Indeed!” Mr. Talbot's eyes bulged. “For instance, your use of that machete in the hothouse—you think I know nothing of this? Why I have seen you myself, wielding that blade among the foliage like a gardener's assistant! And only last week I caught sight of you, with your shoulder to the stern of that peach tree's monstrous conveyance, inching it forward like a laborer in a shipyard!”

“The warm air from the heating pipes is beneficial to the fruits. I have no one else to help me now that—”

Alice fell silent. To mention Lilian's name would only irritate him. And yet, it was impossible to think about the peach tree without thinking about her. They had tended it together, guarding it against mold and aphids, lovingly trimming its branches and harvesting its blushing pink and gold fruits. Indeed, so proficient had she and Lilian become that they coaxed two luscious crops out of the tree every year, simply by wheeling it into different parts of the conservatory. It had been Lilian's idea—Lilian had never liked to wait for anything—and she had jubilantly plucked and painted the first ripe peach. Afterward, they sat together, their backs against one of the tree's enormous wheels, and fed one another with slices of the sweet, silken flesh.

Since Lilian's departure, however, Alice had cultivated only a single crop. The artificial environments of the conservatory meant that she had been able to choose which time of year she wanted the harvest, and she had engineered it to fall in the spring—her last season with Lilian. As the fruits ripened, the cloying smell of peaches suffused the hothouse. Alice found the memories it evoked almost too painful to bear.

She stared at her father bleakly. Why was he mentioning the hothouse and the peach tree? He never brought either of these subjects up. This was mainly because he was not interested in them but also because he was not interested in
her
. And yet, since
Dr. Cattermole's last visit, Alice had noticed that he seemed to have become more watchful than ever.

She realized that her father was still talking.

“I am not interested in your explanations,” he said. “The examples are too numerous. Only the other day Sluce informed me that you had shown more interest in Bellows's flying machine than is appropriate. Then there is your excessive use of my camera. Your fingers are as stained as those of a printer's assistant, and I have frequently overheard you instructing Mr. Blake on matters pertaining to photography—a subject in which
he
is employed as a specialist—in imperious tones most ill suited to a lady in a gentleman's household, which, my dear, is exactly what
you
are supposed to be.”

He stopped, panting for breath. As he had been speaking, Mr. Talbot's voice had become louder and louder, as though he were trying to make himself heard over the hubbub of an increasingly crowded room. “You steer a dangerous course, my dear, and may well find yourself shipwrecked on the very rocks of knowledge toward which I have unwittingly directed you!” He looked pleased with this vivid nautical metaphor and stood back to watch his daughter's reaction to it.

“What do you mean, Father?” said Alice.

Mr. Talbot said nothing but stared at her warily, as though unsure what he might be looking at.

Usually, her father hardly looked at her at all. Alice suddenly found that she too could think of nothing to say which, under the circumstances, was probably just as well.

“You see, you are not
feminine
in your demeanor,” said Mr. Talbot at last, his voice unexpectedly hushed. “Even now, your hands are upon your hips. They should be folded in your lap. I see nothing gentle and comforting in your physiognomy, only a frown of disagreement and a challenging light in your eyes.” But then all at once another, more appealing thought seemed to leap into his mind.

“You will be an exhibit yourself, my dear!
Quod erat demonstrandum!
” He smiled and patted her on the arm. “What a splendid idea! Now then, do see if you can find Mr. Blake. Send him to me at
once. You may also make yourself useful by writing to the members of the Society for the Propagation of Useful and Interesting Knowledge and inviting them to an Evening of Gentlemen's Experiment, Enlightenment, and Amusement at this house on the twenty-ninth of next month.”

“T
HERE YOU ARE,” SAID
A
UNT
P
ENDLETON AT
M
R.
B
LAKE'S
elbow.

He stifled a cry. How quietly these old ladies crept up on one!

Aunt Pendleton patted his hand. “Alice has been looking for you. Are you feeling quite well again?” She peered into his face. “You look a little pale, but then I imagine that is to be expected. You gave us all quite a shock, you know—”

“Yes, thank you, I am quite recovered,” interrupted the photographer hastily. “I must apologize for causing such a disturbance. I hardly know how I can explain myself to you, or indeed how I might thank you and the other ladies for assisting me back to my room so discreetly. My recollection of events is limited, though I am aware that without your most fortuitous intervention there is no knowing what might have occurred—”

As he jabbered out his apologies, Mr. Blake found himself being propelled rapidly along the hallway leading to the conservatory. Before he could even think of an excuse to turn back, the doors to the hothouse had swung silently closed behind him on their well-oiled hinges, and he was wading, like a deep-sea diver, through that familiar leaden atmosphere. He made a feeble attempt to disentangle himself from Aunt Pendleton's grasp, but she had wound her arm through his as a creeper winds about a branch. He abandoned himself to his fate, his head thumping like a tom-tom in time with
the hot-water pipes beneath his feet. As though in a dream he heard Aunt Pendleton's voice describing how she had found her husband, generally such a placid and continent fellow, dead drunk and beached like a drowned man upon a sea of hymn sheets in the verger's office. It turned out that Mr. Pendleton had been a sporting fellow (a vice his young wife had known nothing about), whose bluff had been finally called by the unexpected failure of “Flying Billy” to pass the finish line in the one-twenty at Newmarket. Attendant upon this was the loss of the entire contents of the Temperance Society's accounts—an institution for which he had been a most highly respected treasurer and spokesman.

“What a terrible fellow he was,” said Aunt Pendleton, giving the photographer's arm a friendly squeeze. “It appeared that he was leading a double life. Nothing like you, of course.” She winked and revealed a set of elderly teeth.

And then all at once the fronds of greenery parted and they emerged into the aunts' jungle parlor.

“Alice,” cried Aunt Pendleton. “I have found Mr. Blake for you.”

Alice was sitting at an escritoire that Mr. Blake had not noticed before. It appeared to be situated in a thicket of bamboo. She looked up from her letter. “Tea, Mr. Blake?”

“Yes, please,” he said thickly.

A moment later Mr. Blake found himself sitting on a mildewed sofa. The tendrils of a small glossy creeper had colonized the front corner in the shape of a covetous, spindly-fingered hand. The photographer allowed himself to sink into the warm, slightly damp cushions, his cup of tea balanced on its saucer in his nearly shaking hands. If he sat there still and quiet for long enough, perhaps he too would be claimed by the silent surrounding greenery. And would anyone care if he was?

“What a relief it is to hear that Dr. and Mrs. Cattermole are no longer among us,” declared Aunt Statham with relish. “That man brings out the very worst in Talbot. He becomes so competitive. Cattermole encourages him. Puts ideas into his head.” She gave
Alice a kindly look. “Don't worry, my dear. You know your father has been distracted by Cattermole's nonsense before. He will have forgotten all about it by next week.”

Alice nodded and gave a bleak, unconvinced smile.

“Oh, Mr. Blake, did you hear, Edwin says that Mrs. Cattermole is expecting a child,” said Old Mrs. Talbot, reaching out to offer the photographer a plate of biscuits.

“Well,” said Aunt Pendleton, “she'll have to abandon such tight lacing if that's the case. Mr. Blake, how careless of you! Here, let me pass you a napkin.”

Mr. Blake slid a glance in Alice's direction. She was gazing into the jungle somewhere above his head.

“Indeed,” said Aunt Statham. “But then, of course, bearing children is what women are here for, is it not? In Dr. Cattermole's world, at least.” She laughed. “Each of us has failed in that capacity. I wonder what he would make of it? Perhaps he should exhibit us all!”

“No one will be exhibited,” cried Aunt Lambert. “And especially not Alice.”

“What?” blurted Mr. Blake, unable to hold his tongue. His hands shook. “Alice is to be an
exhibit?
Excuse me, Miss Talbot, but I am to understand that you are considered by Mr. Talbot to be a
part
of his Collection?”

Alice rattled her teacup into its saucer and stood up. “My father asked me to find you,” she said. “Perhaps we should not keep him waiting any longer.”

A
LICE STALKED THROUGH
the dimly lit corridors of the great house with Mr. Blake hurrying behind. He would have walked beside her, but the route she had chosen seemed to pass through the most cluttered thoroughfares, making it impossible to walk in any fashion other than single file.

“Alice,” called the photographer urgently, “Miss Talbot, we
must discuss last night. There are certain … details, certain possible facts that have come to my attention—”

“I take it Mrs. Cattermole implied that you might be the father of her child?” said Alice over her shoulder.

“Yes,” said Mr. Blake. His foot caught on a roll of Chinese silk that had fallen across the passageway, and he almost launched himself on top of her in his efforts to keep upright and within earshot.

“And that this prompted you to seek oblivion in the linen cupboard?”

“I am ashamed to say that yes, it did. Among other things—”

“Ignore her,” said Alice, striding forward. “Then again, perhaps you wish
her
to be your wife?” She turned and glared at the photographer. They were outside her father's study now, and she raised an impatient fist to batter on the door. Mr. Blake seized her hand.

“Miss Talbot. Alice,” he whispered. “Last night I agreed that
you
would be my wife.”

“And now?”

“Now I have learned something. I have been told … certain things. About you. Rumors, facts, who knows?”

“What are you trying to say, Mr. Blake?”

“I am trying to say that it has come to my attention that you might not be …” Mr. Blake hesitated. How on earth could one ask such a question? What was the correct phrasing? Was there any way in which offense could be avoided? He wrung his hands.

“What?”

“It has come to my attention that you may not be … quite as you seem.”

“You said as much last night,” snapped Alice. “I could make neither head nor tail of it then, and I can make neither head nor tail of it now. Mr. Blake, please speak plainly.”

“Miss Talbot,” began the photographer again, his voice louder now, as though volume might come to the aid of clarity. “You are to be an exhibit? As a part of the Collection?”

“So my father wishes.”

Mr. Blake shuddered.

“What of it?” Alice too was almost shouting now. Would the man not just spit it out?

“Are you, God forgive me for asking a lady such a question, are you a … a hermaphrodite?”

At that precise moment the study door flew open and there was Mr. Talbot himself, framed in the doorway. A smoldering cigar was clamped between his teeth. A dusty trail of gray upon the front of his waistcoat revealed the pathway its tumbling ash had taken across the burly topography of his torso. “A hermaphrodite?” he cried. “That's one description, certainly.” He eyed his daughter with interest mingled with hostility. “Dr. Cattermole at least would label her thus. It will be interesting to see what the other members of the Society have to say on the matter. But enough about that for now. Mr. Blake, there is work to be done. I am, at this present moment, devising a system of mnemonics for Sluce,” he said. “The man's memory is deteriorating. I hope to arrest its further decline by furnishing him with a coat of many pockets. Each pocket is numbered. In each of them I shall place an item that will remind him of his duties within the house and the various tasks I have set him to do. Can you help?”

Mr. Blake said nothing. His eyes were fixed upon Alice. Alice's eyes were fixed upon the ground. Mr. Talbot, and Mr. Blake, took this silence for acquiescence.

M
R.
B
LAKE SPENT
the remainder of the day, and most of the evening, with Mr. Talbot in his study helping select items for Sluce's mnemonic coat. Personally, the photographer could not see how such a garment would assist Sluce in any way, as the objects and their associated significance were chosen by Mr. Talbot with little or no input from the intended beneficiary. Sluce, however, donned this bulging-pocketed coat without complaint and disappeared
with a nod about his mysterious business in the dark and crowded hallways. Mr. Talbot seemed to think it was a job well done. He hoped to report its success to the society the following week. Mr. Blake thought he had wasted an afternoon. Mr. Talbot tried to detain him further by producing for discussion and experiment another of his recent acquisitions—a pair of enormously long and unwieldy brass and ivory binoculars. But Mr. Blake could stand his employer's company no longer. Using indisposition as an excuse, he retired feeling irritable, without taking any supper.