The Lamplighter (2 page)

“This is your father, child,” Mr. Lindsay informed her. “Mr. James Ainslie, the Laird of Millenhall.”

Evelyn was puzzled. The matron had told her she had been dumped on the orphanage steps when she was barely the size of a turnip, and as far as she knew her surname was Todd, not Ainslie. And while she had often dreamed of her mother, she never thought it possible that she might have a father.

“I have only recently learned of your existence, Eve,” Ainslie said. “And in truth I thought you had not survived. But now I have come to claim you from the Institute. I know it will be difficult for you to leave, but I assure you that you will not regret it. You must not resist, Eve. I urge you not to resist.”

Evelyn looked into his hopeful eyes, smelled his sweet soap and lotions, and glanced over his shoulder to a governor staring down his nose like some city chambers statue.

“I will not resist,” she assured Mr. Ainslie, who at once hugged her with conspicuous relief, as though she truly had a choice.

The transfer was effected with unusual haste, as though Mr. Lindsay were eager to be divested of her. She was not given time to say farewell to her friends, but the disappointment was quickly suffused by a mounting excitement. She was escorted to a waiting brougham and deposited onto one of the plush seats, the first time she had been in a carriage. When they swept around the corner it was impossible not to feel that she had begun a great adventure.

“Millenhall is a wee distance from here,” Ainslie told her brightly. “You'll love it dearly, Eve. But I'd very much like it to be a surprise for you.”

He produced a tartan scarf and secured it around her eyes, chuckling like a game player. But even the blindfold could not contain her imagination.

“We enter a country road,” she declared excitedly as the carriage wheels trundled onto a dirt track. “Tree branches overhead. Sycamores—I smell the sap.”

Ainslie laughed.

“Chestnuts. Whin-bushes with a honey fragrance.”

“Your imagination serves you splendidly, Eve.”

She heard wood warblers, song thrushes, and other strange birds. She felt the shadowy caress of swaying branches, and inhaled air tainted by wood smoke and the tang of paper mills. She was intoxicated.

The brougham drew up, a gate creaked open, and they wheeled around a substantial forecourt. She was led across flagstones, through a poorly oiled door, and carried up stairs to a chamber smelling of freshly disturbed dust. Here Ainslie lowered her to the floor and closed the door behind them. He unfastened the blindfold.

She found herself in a bedroom, furnished with only a washstand, a chair, and a freshly quilted bed. The shutters were tight, the only light entering through a frosted gable window. But she thought it worthy of a princess.

“Do you like it, Eve?”

She nodded vigorously. She could barely contemplate such luxury.

“It's important that you settle in very quickly,” Ainslie said. “And when the time comes we shall go places. On boats, on fox hunts, and we shall travel on trains. Would you like that, Eve?”

She thought there could be no greater pleasure.

“Later,” he promised, smiling. “When your mother recovers.”

He locked the door behind her, leaving Evelyn thrilled by the prospect of at last being embraced by the woman who had dumped her like a turnip on the cold orphanage steps.

But for a long time she saw nothing other than the paneled walls of her bedroom. Twice a day she was brought warm water and hot meals by Ainslie, who spellbound her with recollections of his travels and military service. He had lived much of his life in London, he said, and journeyed as a merchant seaman to Bombay and Java, caught shrapnel in the face in Sevastopol, and been stationed with the Royal Rifle Corps at the Gold Coast of West Africa, where he had played the pipes to the monkeys like the Pied Piper.

He produced watercolors and inks and encouraged her to paint, and as she had nothing else to do her output was prolific. Ainslie inspected each picture with enthusiasm, and seemed especially approving of those featuring an avuncular gentleman dressed in a peaked cap, blue fustian jacket, and grey scarf.

“Who is he, Eve?”

She told him it was Leerie.

“A man you know?”

“A man I have never seen,” she replied. Her picture was in fact a composite of appealing features: the pointed beard of the old doctor who visited the orphanage, the emerald eyes of the maintenance man, the attire of the coalman.

Ainslie considered the matter. “And this Leerie…do you imagine that he might walk in those fantastic cities you draw?”

“There is no place he cannot go.”

Ainslie encouraged her to show the lamplighter in all manner of exotic locales and situations: in storybook castles, in fabulous forests, soaring over waterfalls on winged steeds. The pictures were carried off at the end of each day, and she saw them again only when she was asked to refine a select few, as though they were being prepared for exhibition before the Queen.

Her incarceration, such as it was, was nothing new, and the bed was soft and capacious, the food plentiful, she had pretty new petticoats, and in health she flourished. She discovered one of the shutter leaves was ajar, and occasionally was able to see out to a neighboring graveyard overgrown with thistle and weed, and to the forecourt, where carts would frequently pull up laden with articles of furniture. The lodge was being hastily fitted out, it seemed, and into her own room Ainslie introduced a looking glass, a wardrobe, and a painting of the Zoological Gardens.

“Your mother will arrive shortly,” he assured her. “And soon we shall go for a long trip—to some of those same exotic cities you draw for Leerie.”

That very afternoon she saw a trap pull up and a sandy-haired woman alight at the door. The woman, most agreeable in appearance, was greeted by Ainslie with an intimate smile and a whisper, and Evelyn, turning from the window, paced restlessly around her room, excited by the possibility that she had for the first time set eyes on her mother.

But when Ainslie came up that night he wore a funereal expression.

“I want you to come downstairs with me, Eve,” he whispered, “and I want you to be very quiet and respectful. Your mother is very ill, as I have said, and may not recognize you.”

It was the same person she had seen from the window—she was sure of it—and yet when Evelyn approached she found her mother unnaturally white, pale-lipped, and creased with dark lines. The woman trembled as she enclosed Evelyn in spidery arms, and smelled of powder and wax.

“Let me look at you, Eve,” she croaked, and tilted her daughter's face to examine her with ill-focused eyes. “Can you ever forgive me?” she implored. “Do you think you might be capable?”

And though Evelyn was poorly acquainted with remorse and was reluctant to admit any measure of disappointment, she sensed no real love in her mother's voice, no genuine grief, and when she withdrew it was with confusion in her heart.

Later Ainslie discovered the loose shutter and had her windows painted over from the outside.

More furniture was shifted into position. She heard new voices, edgy murmurs, and once a woman's voice raised in indignation. Ainslie appeared one evening with an apologetic look.

“I regret that I've not been able to attend to you, Eve, but there has been much absorbing my attention. Soon, I promise, we will travel far. But in the meantime it is very important to me that you feel at home. I want you to think of this as the house where you have always resided. Do you think you could do that? Forget the Institute entirely?”

She suggested that it would be no disagreeable task.

He smiled. “Then if anyone asks, you will not challenge the notion that we have always been a family?”

It was a curious request, but she felt disinclined to resist.

“I fear your mother has worsened, Eve. I've had to call on a special doctor I know from my days in Africa—a tribesman of the Ashanti. If you see him I do not want you to be alarmed. He could well be our salvation.”

He left without locking the door.

When she ventured out some time later she heard a visitor being conducted around the lower floor like a prospective buyer. She waited at the top of the stairs and eventually Ainslie appeared with the strangest man she had ever seen.

He was exceedingly tall, as black as Crusoe's Friday, with a gleaming oversized head ringed with hieroglyphs. He wore flowing saffron robes and carried a scepter of interlocking bones. Chewing continuously and humming without melody, he made a sweeping survey of the hall, his eyes lingering on the Turkey carpets, wicker baskets, mounted stag's head, and other articles Evelyn had not previously seen, as well as on the cornices, the architraves, the paneling, the pilasters…on every distinguishing feature in the hall, in fact, as though making a concerted effort to emboss the images onto his memory.

When his head rotated toward the upper level, his eyes settled on Evelyn and his humming abruptly ceased. She felt pinned in place, violated by his scrutiny, but his broad lips quickly peeled back in a smile. Ainslie indicated that she should come down the stairs.

In the visitor's proximity she smelled herbs and ash. The man stroked her head and caressed her face with velvety fingertips, and in this simple gesture she perceived more tenderness than anything she had felt from her own parents. He examined her with his cloudy eyes, traced the contours of her neck and shoulders, and eventually resumed his tuneless humming.