Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [33]
Whatever the case, he was not near me now.
No spirits, no ghosts. Only the clean cooled air of the house as it came through the vents with the soft sound of a low breeze.
“He’s not with us,” said Lestat quietly.
“You know that for certain?” I asked.
“No, but you do,” he replied.
He was right.
I led the way up the curving staircase. I felt sharply that for better or worse, I would now have Lestat to myself.
6
THE UPPER HALL HAD three doors on the right wall, and, due to the staircase rising against the left wall, only two on that side. The first door on the left led into my apartment, which was two rooms deep, and the last door on the left led to the bedroom on the rear of the house.
Lestat asked if he might see any rooms, and I told him that he could see most of them. Two of the three bedrooms on the right were uninhabited right now—one belonging to my little Uncle Tommy, who was away at boarding school in England, and the other always reserved for his sister Brittany—and were kind of fancy showpieces, each with its ornate nineteenth-century four-poster bed, ritual baldachin, velvet or taffeta hangings and comfortable though fancy chairs and couches, much like those in Aunt Queen’s bedroom downstairs.
In the third room, which was off limits, there hovered my mother, Patsy, whom I hoped we would not see.
Each marble mantelpiece—one snow white and the other of black and gold—had its distinct detail, and there were gilded mirrors wherever one turned, and those huge proud portraits of ancestors—William and his wife, pretty Grace; Gravier and his wife, Blessed Alice; and Thomas, my Pops, and Sweetheart, my grandmother, whose real name had been Rose.
The ceiling lights were gasoliers, with brass arms and cut crystal cups for their bulbs, more ordinary yet more atmospheric than the sumptuous crystal chandeliers of the first floor.
As to the last bedroom on the left, it too was open and neatened and fine, but it belonged to my tutor, Nash Penfield, who was presently completing some work for his Ph.D. in English at a university on the West Coast. He had always cooperated with the four-poster bed and its ruffles of blue silk, his desk was clean and bare and waiting for him and his walls, very much like mine, were lined with books. His fireplace, like mine, had a pair of damask chairs facing each other, elegant and well worn.
“The guests were always on the right side of the hallway,” I explained, “in the old hotel days, and here in Nash’s room, my grandparents slept—Sweetheart and Pops. Nash and I spent the last year or so reading Dickens to each other. I tread anxiously with him, but so far things have worked out.”
“But you love this man, don’t you?” Lestat asked. He followed me into the bedroom. He politely inspected the shelves of books.
“Of course I love him. But he may sooner or later know something’s very wrong with me. So far I’ve had very good luck.”
“These things depend a lot on nerve,” said Lestat. “You’d be amazed what mortals will accept if you simply behave as if you’re human. But then you know this, don’t you?”
He returned to the bookshelves respectfully, removing nothing, only pointing.
“Dickens, Dickens and more Dickens,” he said, smiling. “And every biography of the man ever written, it seems.”
“Yes,” I said, “and I read him aloud to Nash, novel after novel, some right there by the fireplace. We read them all through, and then I would just dip down into any book—The Old Curiosity Shop or Little Dorrit or Great Expectations—and the language, it was delicious, it would dazzle me, it was like you said to Aunt Queen. You said it so very right. It was like dipping into a universe, yes, you had it.” I broke off. I realized I was still giddy from being with Aunt Queen, from the way he had been in attendance on her; and as for Nash, I missed him and wanted him so to come back.
“He was a superb teacher,” ventured Lestat gently.
“He was my tutor in every subject,” I confessed. “If I can be