Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [2]
She leaned back and closed her eyes. Another chair had once stood in this same spot—a chair with a tall back and winged sides, where a child could curl herself small and be almost invisible …
SHE IS NINE YEARS OLD, sitting in that chair—her favourite chair, where she escapes to read. It’s Saturday afternoon. Father is at his club. Mother has Mrs. Currie and Mrs. Roberts over for lunch. The child can hear the clink of cups and spoons in the dining-room.
She is supposed to be having a rest after her own lunch in the kitchen. But she came downstairs to look for a new book and retreated to the wing chair after she’d found one on her special shelf.
The book is called The Princess and the Goblin. The child sniffs its leather cover and reverently unfolds it. She carefully turns the crackly pages to the first enticing words: “There was once a little princess whose father was king over a great country full of mountains and valleys.”
Unfastening the tight straps on her shoes, she lifts her feet onto the chair and props the book on her knees. With a happy sigh she falls into Princess Irene’s world.
The child is reading so intently she barely hears the hum of voices near her. At first they seem like voices on the other side of a wall—the wall of the story she’s engrossed in. But suddenly she realizes the voices are right in the room. She freezes.
Mother will be angry that she’s in the study instead of upstairs. But the chair faces the window, its high back a barricade to the three women chatting near the door. If she is extremely still they might not detect her.
“Here it is,” Mother says. “I knew I’d put it in this drawer. There you are, Muriel. I think you’ll agree it’s the best seed catalogue.”
“Thank you for lending it to me, Philippa,” she hears Mrs. Currie say.
“That was a delicious lunch,” says Mrs. Roberts. “We got a lot planned for the next garden meeting, didn’t we? Next month it’s my turn.”
They go on with thank-yous and goodbyes, but no one moves from the study. The child squirms, trying not to let a leg show. Mother’s friends always take so long to say goodbye—why can’t they just leave?
“What a gloomy room this is,” sighs Mother. She walks over and pulls one of the heavy curtains open a little farther. The child’s heart thuds so strongly she’s sure Mother can hear it; but nothing happens.
“I think it’s a pleasant room,” says Mrs. Roberts politely. “All these books! What a reader Giles must be.”
“He treats this room like his private kingdom,” says Mother. “He won’t let me decorate it and he complains if the maid moves anything.” She sighs again. “And now my only child is becoming just like him. Every time I complain that she reads too much, Giles tells me to let her be. He’s filled a special shelf with books for her and he’s always adding to them.”
“How is the dear child?” asks Mrs. Currie. “I haven’t seen her since our Wendy’s birthday party.” She suppresses a giggle. “I’m sorry, Philippa, I didn’t mean to laugh.”
“It’s quite all right,” says Mother. “It was rather funny, wasn’t it?” But her voice is not amused. “Walking right into a pond in her best clothes! Daydreaming, as usual. Now she refuses to go to any parties.”
The child blushes as hotly as she did when they fished her out of the garden pond, strings of green slime hanging from her hair and her white dress.
She had been daydreaming. She’d been pretending she was a queen, to keep from crying when the girls called her “Horseface,” as they did every day in school. When she’d followed the other children into the house for birthday cake, she had been leading an imaginary royal procession—and fallen into the pond without seeing it. She could still hear the girls’ jeering laughter as she’d splashed and spluttered.
Mother’s voice sounds desperate. “I’m at my wit’s end about her. All she wants to do is read—or she wanders in the cemetery for hours