Dolly Read Online Free Page A

garden.’
    He followed her into the hall. ‘But I expect you’d like to see your room and so on now.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    Mrs Mullen appeared from behind a baize-covered door.
    ‘I’ll take him up then shall I?’
    He did not want her to but could not have said and they all three stood about uncertainly for a moment.
    ‘Well, perhaps I should … you carry on with the dining room, Mrs Mullen.’
    He noted the name.
    ‘Pick those up then,’ Mrs Mullen said, pointing to his bags, the small one and the very small.
    ‘Yes.’
    Edward picked them up and followed his aunt to the stairs.

5
    At what time should you go up?’
    Edward looked up from the solitaire board. Aunt Kestrel had unlocked a cupboard in the drawing room, whose blinds were pulled down all day as well as at night, and found the solitaire, a shove ha’penny board and a pile of jigsaw puzzles which he taken up to the attics. He examined the glass marbles again. They were wonderful colours, deep sea green, brilliant blue, blood red, and clear glass enclosing swirls of misty grey. The board was carved out of rosewood with green velvet covering the underside.
    ‘Do you have something to eat first, or …’
    ‘I have milk and two biscuits at seven and then I go to bed.’
    ‘Of course, these are the holidays; I daresay rules should be stretched. When would you like to go up?’
    The idea that he could choose his own time, that routine was not made of iron but could be broken, was not only new but alarming.
    ‘I am quite tired,’ he said, moving a blue marble over a clear glass one, to leave only seven on the board. His aunt had shown him how to play and as it had been raining, he had done so, sitting beside the window, for most of the afternoon. Seven was the smallest number he had got down to without being unable to move again.
    ‘You have had a rather dull day.’
    ‘It has been very nice, thank you.’
    Kestrel was taken aback again by the opaque politeness of the child.
    ‘You will have more fun when Leonora arrives. And this miserable rain. We don’t get a lot of rain at Iyot but we do get wind. Wind and skies.’
    He thought everyone had sky, or skies, but perhaps this was not the case. He didn’t ask.
    ‘Five!’ he said under his breath, removing another blue.
    ‘Excellent.’
    Mrs Mullen brought in a small glass of milk and two garibaldi biscuits on a lacquer tray.
    ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, stopping in the doorway. ‘I have had a very nice day.’
    His earnest, unformed face stayed with Kestrel for a long time after he had gone. He was her own flesh and blood, he was part of her. She did not know him, as she had not known Dora after she had grown up and married, and yet she felt connected to him and his words touched her deeply, his vulnerability impressed itself on her so that she felt suddenly afraid on his behalf and had an urge to protect him. But he had gone, his footsteps mounting the stairs carefully until they went away to the fourth flight and the attics.
    Once he was there, Edward put his milk and the hated garibaldi biscuits carefully on the table beside his bed, and went to look out of the window. It was very high. The sky was huge and full of sagging leaden clouds, making the night seem closer than it was by the clock. Ragged jackdaws whirled about on the wind like scraps of torn burned paper. He could see the church tower, the churchyard, the road, and the flat acres of fen with deep dykes criss-crossing them. A small stone bridge. A brick cottage beside a lock, though he did not yet know that was what it was called.
    He drank the milk in small sips and wonderedwhat he could do with the biscuits that he could not have swallowed any more than he could have swallowed a live spider. In the end, he opened the cupboard in the wall. It was completely empty. He broke off a corner of the biscuit and crumbled it onto the plate, and climbed up and put the rest far back on the highest shelf he could reach. Perhaps mice