Page 5 of The Book of Lost Stories
‘Rage does enliven him,’ Miss Grimshaw pointed out. ‘So much so that he woke early, ate a coddled egg and dry toast and then sent down for the brandy, which he accused me of watering. I was quite quaking in my shoes, but I told him straight I would never dream of doing such a thing.’
‘No, for I do it myself, so your conscience is quite clear on that score,’ Alys assured her.
‘I don’t really know if it answers anyway, Alys, for if it tastes weaker he just seems to drink the more. And now he has finished the bottle, called for his boots and pistol, and gone into the garden.’
Alys sighed, for Major Weston, a feverish, emaciated invalid generally under the influence of intoxicating beverages, only now left his room when the fancy suddenly took him to shoot off his pistol in the garden. Since he had lost his left arm and the sight in one eye during the disastrous retreat of the Duke of York’s army through Flanders in ’94, and suffered frequent tremors due to a recurrent fever, his aim was not what it once was.
‘Let us hope Saul remembers to stand well back, once he has loaded for Papa,’ she remarked, for the young servant, though amiable and obliging, was not noted for his high intelligence. ‘He will not be of much use about the garden if he has a hole blown through him.’
Miss Grimshaw shuddered. ‘I am sure he learned his lesson that time the major singed his hat.’
There was a sudden explosion from the garden below and the tinkle of broken glass, followed by a noisy mass exodus of startled rooks from the trees that divided the Dower House from Squire Basset’s park.
‘Oh, well, I suppose using empty bottles for targets at least gives themsomeuse, even if we are picking glass out of the flowerbeds for ever afterwards,’ Alys said, then advised Letty to get back to the laundry. ‘Send Mary up with the hot water and I will be down directly.’
But by the time she had got downstairs the explosions and curses from the garden had ceased, and Saul, grinning as though he had just enjoyed a high treat, was assisting Major Weston back to his chamber, quite exhausted.
‘Good morning, Papa,’ Alys said dutifully, stepping aside to let them pass.
‘Well, Miss Slug-a-bed!’ he returned, his hollow-eyed face cadaverous in the dark passageway and his one, sunken dark eye burning with fever or drink … or possibly both. There were traces still of the handsome man who had captivated her mother into an imprudent runaway match with him so long ago, Alys thought, even though he was now quite pared down to bones, selfishness and bad temper.
He grasped her shoulder suddenly with a skeletal, shaking hand. ‘You have heard the news that Lord Rayven and his heir are dead, girl?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ Alys said cautiously, for she could not see that the accidental death of two people she had never met, tragic though it might be, could concern her.
‘And now the son of that cheating blackguard Hugo Rayven is to inherit all!’ His face grew dark and twisted with anger and his grip on her shoulder became painful. ‘You will have nothing to do with him, do you hear?’
‘Of course not, Papa. How should I? Our paths are extremely unlikely to cross.’
He stared at her for a moment as if he had forgotten whoshe was. Then his hand dropped and he pushed past and went on up the stairs.
‘Now what maggot has got into his head?’ Alys muttered, as the stumbling footsteps passed overhead. Even Squire Basset, papa’s cousin, by whose kindness they were established in the modest Dower House on the estate, was not on visiting terms with the Rayvens of Priory Chase, which was situated miles away, near Harrogate, although he might, she supposed, have occasionally shared the hunting field with one or other of them.
Alys broke her fast with tea and bread and butter fetched from the kitchen herself, since Mary, the one maid of all work, was by now engaged in helping Letty spread the first sheets to dry over the lavender and rosemary bushes.
Alys had taken full control of the housekeeping before her fourteenth birthday, and mastered the art of driving a hard bargain in the bartering of chickens and eggs long before that, but it was Letty who seemed to find all the tedious little household tasks quite engrossing. A timid and self-effacing woman originally engaged by Squire Basset’s first wife as Alys’s governess, she had quickly and almost imperceptibly slipped into the role of general factotum to her strong-minded charge.
Due to Major Weston’s reclusive tendency, chronic invalidism and a selfish determination that his only child should devote her life to his care, Alys’s social circle was largely constricted to Sir Ralph and Lady Basset, his son, James, by his first marriage, and the rector and his good –toogood – wife, Mrs Franby.
The nearby village of Little Stidding did not provide much in the way of amusement either, except for the weekly market,and although there were monthly assemblies in the nearest town, Alys had as much hope of gaining Papa’s permission to attend them as of flying to the moon.
Other than that, there was an unlimited supply of bleakly beautiful moorland to roam over, and a lot of sheep … among whom, of course, she did not include her dear Letty, to whom she was most sincerely attached, despite her being some twenty years her senior and quite scatter-brained.
So it was perhaps not surprising that Alys had found her only means of escape from this trammelled and unexciting existence in the world of novels and her own imagination. And now that she had set out on the writing of an entire novel of her own, she possessed a whole new world she could, godlike, create for her own amusement, peopled by creatures that must dance at her command.
Soon the squire would send down yesterday’s newspaper from the Hall and she would have to read it to Papa, when he had recovered from his exertions, although at least he did tend to be as meek as a lamb for some hours after these sessions.
Meanwhile, alone in the dining parlour with a half-eaten slice of bread and butter, Alys sat turning over possible pen names –malepen names – until eventually she fixed on Orlando Browne. She had no idea where the notion came from, but liked the sound of it very well.
Orlando Browne. Yes, he could take liberties with his characters and plot that a mereMissmight not, especially in the way of scenes of passion and violence, which she intended to sprinkle liberally throughout Lady Malvina’s history.
And her heroine would not be some frail, fainting creature – or, even worse, a pious bore – but a woman of sense andfortitude, who would be undaunted by the supposedly supernatural terrors that would beset her, for Alys was at one with the great Mrs Radcliffe in believing only in the rational.
*
Later, walking across the park to the Hall, Alys reflected that it was odd that the warm-hearted, good-natured, but undeniably vulgar second wife of Sir Ralph should have formed her literary tastes.
Lydia Basset had been an actress before her elevation to her present position, and she loved melodrama, adoring any tale that smacked of the Gothic. Alys, frequently called on in the afternoons to read to her until she fell asleep, soon found herself eagerly carrying each new novel home for a more earnest perusal once Lady Basset had finished with it.
