Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [60]
“Please, if you would.” He pushed it towards her. He did not want it near. It promised nothing but complications, and he had not the energy to accommodate them.
“I hope it is not bad news.” Cook gave him a kind and serious look through her porridge steam. She examined the glossy seal with approval before breaking it, then she labored through some of the writing within. “She hopes you are well,” she said, “and she sends you her love. They are all well there—no bad news, then.” Cook patted Smoll’s hand before toiling on. “Only Biss has been laid low with a fever. That has broken. All is well. She is coming good. Biss is your sister?”
“She is my cousin. But she lives with us, as good as a sister.” And Smoll lost his good posture again, thinking of Biss waving him off in the carriage that day, a little weeping to lose him; of Biss laughing too much sometimes and having to be sat and calmed; of Biss ill and subdued, lying abed (unimaginable!), and how he had not been there to help Ma care for her or to share in the worrying.
“Ah, here is the business. ‘Your brother Dravitt has come into the good fortune of being apprenticed to Nape’s uncle George Paste down at Caunterbury, and he will be coming through London on the twenty-ninth of January—’ ” Cook read on, frowning, crouched over the letter. If he had not known her, by her expression right now he would have thought her a most bad-tempered person.
“Your porridge will get cold,” said Smoll. His own porridge was all spooned up and eaten, fast and nervously, he had been rendered so self-conscious by the letter, and by his home life being brought out around the breakfast table, here in his new life. It pained him, the thought of Ma relaying to the priest all she wanted Smoll to know, and the way the priest had corrected and embroidered her words with priest language, putting himself and his education between Smoll and his ma.
“She hopes Mr. Beecham will permit young Dravitt to stay here a night on his journey, is the sense of it, boiled down.”
They both looked to Mr. Pinkney, at the far end of the table with his tea and thin toast, his braces and his white, white shirtfront on which never a drop was spilt, never a crumb was deposited.
Pinkney tipped his head, sipped his tea. “I am sure Mr. Beecham will have no objection. Dravitt, is it?, should be no trouble to us, sharing your little eyrie for a night.” He took another sip and glanced along the table, a glint in his eye. “Unless he is of a much different make from yourself, Smoll. Is he a wild boy, your brother?”
“Oh no, sir. Drav would be timider than me, by far.”
“Oh, Smoll.” Cook laughed a little at Smoll’s earnestness and gave his hand a brisk rub where it lay there on the table.
He barely noticed, he was so occupied with the warring emotions inside him. He felt a stab of missing Dravitt and all the littlies, and Biss and Ma, and the house, and all around it, the village he knew, so humdrum, every stone and weed of it, every codger and kid. This keen distress was cut through by the relief it would be to see Drav again and show his new life to him—yet it would be pain, too, for it would agitate Smoll’s homesickness, which until now had been thoroughly obscured by the novelty of his new duties and worries. And all these complexities were in turn flattened by the stark dread, the absolute impossibility of Drav’s visiting, the intractable necessity for Mr. Pinkney and Mr. Beecham to forbid it. Sharing your little eyrie for a night—that must not happen. Drav must never endure a night with Smoll in the attic room! Clearly Cook and Pinkney knew nothing of what happened up there, once the household slept. Smoll gathered up his posture again, lifted his chin, and the necklace of raw patches stretched and twinged.
“I will ask Mr. Beecham this morning,” said Pinkney, “but I dare say he will be entirely happy with the idea.”
IT WAS NEAR a fortnight before Dravitt was to come. Smoll proceeded towards the day mazed with terror. Dravitt must not see the dream-lady,