Chapter Text
I FIRST FELT IT in the school canteen on Monday morning. For a moment it was like being on a roller coaster when you’re racing down from the very top. It lasted only two seconds, but that was long enough for me to dump a plateful of mashed potatoes all over my school uniform. I managed to catch the plate just in time, as my knife and fork clattered to the floor.
Lesley gathered them while I failed to wipe out the sauce from my shirt. “This stuff tastes like it’s been scraped off the floor anyway.” She said, looking at the stain and tilting her head. “You can have mine if you want to, but I don’t think the colors really match.”
“Pass.” I said, rolling my eyes.
I buttoned up my blue blazer over the blouse. Lesley was right about the uniform. The St. Lennox High School’s turtleneck usually had the color of mashed potatoes rather than the pearly white the girls in the school advertisements wore.
“Weren’t you taught not to play with your food, Gwenny ?” Cynthia Dale, living advertisement’s girl that somehow always wore pearly white shirts, said as she walked past my table.
I really couldn’t count the number of times the stupid tie had been drenched in sauce, juice, or milk. Not to mention last week’s accident that ended up with my pudding landing in a kid’s spaghetti. Cynthia wasn’t my favorite person, far from it, but she wasn’t wrong. I just would never let her know that.
“Weren’t you taught to take care of your own business, Cyn ?” She didn’t say anything else and just rolled her eyes while she sat at her own table. There was a time when we used to sit together before she decided that Cyn wasn’t a nickname cool enough, and neither was I.
“Does Charlotte truly enjoys her company or is she just hanging out with them because of the status?” Lesley said, pointing her fork to Charlotte and Cynthia’s table.
“I don’t think Charlotte really cares about her high school status.” If she did, she disguised it very well. She never seemed to care about any fashion trend, or if she was going to the right parties. Her future was more important and magnificent than any of that.
“I don’t think it really matters what she does. It’s Charlotte.” Lesley said, playing with her food. “Everybody would’ve known her regardless of who she hanged out with.” She told me, chewing.
“Can we stop talking about Charlotte now?” I asked and Lesley grinned, showing me she had gotten the message.
I focused my attention on eating the parts of my lunch that didn’t look like they had already been chewed, enjoying my five minutes of peace and quiet. In my house, Charlotte was the sun, and my world had always revolved around her. But lately, all the fuss made by my crazy family over my cousin was just too much.
Everyone was on edge, waiting for Charlotte to have a dizzy fit. On most days, my grandmother, Lady Arista, asked Charlotte how she was feeling every ten minutes. My aunt Glenda, Charlotte’s mother, filled the ten-minute gap by asking the same thing in between Lady Arista’s interrogations.
And whenever Charlotte said that she didn’t feel dizzy, Lady Arista’s lips tightened and Aunt Glenda sighed. Or sometimes the other way around.
Nick, Caroline, and my great-aunt Maddy had many theories about Charlotte’s condition. When I was a kid, Lesley and I would sit around Aunt Maddy and hear all her time travel stories. I just stop believing them after a while, following my mom’s sighs with eye rolls whenever someone mentioned visiting the past.
“Every family is a little crazy, honey.” She usually said. “You’ll learn to ignore it eventually. I promise.” And then she would blink at me and I would feel fine living in a wack house because my mom would teach me how to survive it.
Apart from that, however, Lady Arista always kept the reason for her obsession over Charlotte a secret. All we knew was that she suffered from some kind of a rare gene mutation, and apparently, dizziness was the main symptom that would set the start point for everything else the disease could bring.
Charlotte herself usually hid her feelings behind a mysterious Mona Lisa smile. I didn’t know if she really believed in all of that, or if she just went along with it because it wasn’t worth the trouble. But I guessed she didn’t know what it was like not to be the center of attention all the time. I didn’t envy that. I might live among madness, but at least I didn’t have people running after me whenever I sneezed.
“Something will happen soon.” Lady Arista always said.
“You obviously prepared well for it.” Mr. Whitman, our history teacher, said, giving Charlotte a side glance.
She stroked a strand of her glossy red hair back from her face and smiled proudly, as if the result came as a surprise to her. It wasn’t a surprise for anybody else. Charlotte always had top marks in everything.
Lesley poked me in the ribs with her elbow, raising her eyebrows and showing me her A. Although our “preparation” had consisted of eating crisps and ice cream while watching anything remotely historical, we did pretty well on the test. An A-minus always looked nice on a C student like myself.
I did pay attention in history class, which couldn’t be said for all our other courses. But Mr. Whitman’s classes were so intriguing that I couldn’t help listening. Although for the rest of the class, Mr. Whitman was more interesting than the course itself. Most of the girls had a very public secret crush on him. Lesley disagreed, but he was terribly good looking.
The tall, sunburned, Californian look fitted him perfectly, and along with the white shirts he wore daily and were a bit too revealing for school, it wasn’t a surprise that he had many eyes drawn to him, including Mrs. Counter, our geography teacher, who was just as bad as hiding her blushed cheeks as her students.
Despite the fact that I couldn’t deny he was handsome, I didn’t share the same passion for him as my classmates. The entire teacher/student relationship grossed me out too much to think of him as anything more than my history teacher.
Lesley, on the other hand, refused to even give the man one positive compliment regarding his appearance. She thought I was either blind or crazy for finding him attractive, and had even insisted on saying he looked like a squirrel. The comparison stopped after she realized that weren’t any “nut” jokes she could’ve cracked that didn’t sound dirty.
Every other student who was also interested in the girls in my class could’ve agreed with my friend’s opinion. Gordon Gelderman, in particular, couldn’t stand him. Before Mr. Whitman came to teach in our school, he was the number one boy to be in love with. I couldn’t deny that he was still somewhat cute, and I could see why eleven-year-old me thought he was the love of her life, but now everything that came out of his mouth erased the good-looking traces on his face.
Gordon was in the middle of his monologue of why he didn’t deserve an F, and that Mr. Whitman couldn’t judge his interpretation of history, when our teacher stooped him and looked anxiously at Charlotte.
“Are you feeling alright, Charlotte?
My cousin had her head placed between both of her hands, her eyes closed and chest lifting at a weird, uncommon rhythm. When she looked up, her face looked paler, the usual red on her lips turning into a dark shade of purple.
“I feel … I just feel dizzy,” she said, looking at me. “Everything’s going round and round.”
I took a deep breath. So here we go, I thought. Lady Arista and Aunt Glenda would be over the moon.
“Cool.” Lesley whispered “Is she going to turn all transparent now?” She lifted her eyebrows and gave me a teased smile. She found the secrets my family lived in very amusing ever since I disobeyed Lady Arista’s orders to never tell anyone about Charlotte’s “condition”. She had a gene mutation, for God’s sake, it wasn’t that special.
I got up, locking eyes with my cousin. She looked different. Since I’d known Charlotte, which in fact was all my life, she’d always seemed somewhat helpless. But I knew what to do. Aunt Glenda had told me enough times for a lifetime.
“I’ll take Charlotte home,” I told Mr. Whitman. “If that’s okay.” I added quickly.
Mr. Whitman’s gaze was fixed on Charlotte. “I think that’s a good idea, Gwyneth,” he said. “I hope you feel better soon, Charlotte.”
“Thank you, Mr. Whitman.” Charlotte smiled softly as I followed her.
I grabbed her arm, and for the first time I felt important to Charlotte. It was a nice feeling to be needed for a change. We passed by several classrooms, my backpack bouncing behind my back as I walked as fast I could without having to run and return Charlotte with a scratch to Aunt Glenda.
As we passed the lockers, Charlotte wanted to grab some of her things. I gave her a weak pull and continued to drag her out of the school building.
“Not now, Charlotte. The first thing we need to do is get you home, okay?” I told her, Lady Arista’s instructions rolling down my tongue and running through my head.
“It’s gone again.” her tone sounded indifferent, but she looked...disappointed.
“So? It can come back at any moment.” I tried to sound as gentle as I could as Charlotte let me steer her the other way. “Are you scared? Do you want me to call home? I know we’re not supposed to, but we can wait for your mom to—”
“It’s okay.” She cut me. “I’m not scared.” Every hint of doubt on her face disappeared with her words. She had the Mona Lisa smile on her face, and I could never tell what she was hiding behind it.
“I just figured—” I tried before she interrupted me once more.
“You can leave the thinking to me, don’t worry.” She was definitely starting to sound like herself again.
We went down the stone steps to the place where James always sat. The trouble with James was that no one else could see or hear him, only me. James looked just like anyone I’d ever met. Except for his clothes, of course. He wore both a beauty spot and a wig, but they looked better on him than one might think.
But James was a ghost, which never felt a normal thing to say. I started seeing things that weren’t really there when I was a kid. Gargoyles coming to life, scrambling down the fronts of buildings before my very eyes and twisting their Gothic faces for me to see. It took me a couple of years to realize that ghosts can’t hurt you, not physically at least.
Aunt Glenda and Charlotte were sure I made up every ghost story I told them when I was younger to draw attention to myself. My mom was never that cruel, but she always thought it was my imagination. As I grew up, I learned to keep my mouth shut about my illusions. People don’t tend to react all that well when they think you’re crazy. Except for Lesley. She always embraced my craziness, even though I did my best to keep her out of it.
The first thing Lesley said when I told her about James was something along the lines of “Ask him if he buried treasure anywhere.” A big contrast with James’ astonishment of her lack of care, which in his words, would never allow her to “catch herself a husband”. Unfortunately James was not the treasure-burying type, and he was rather insulted that Lesley thought he might be. He was easily insulted.
“What does she mean, a ghost? The Honorable James Augustus Peregrine Pympoole-Bothame, heir to the fourteenth Earl of Hardsdale, is taking no insults from young girls!” he would usually say.
Like so many ghosts, he refused to accept that he wasn’t alive anymore. Try as he might, which he didn’t, he couldn’t remember dying. We had met five years ago, on my first day at St. Lennox High School, but to James, it seemed only a few days ago that he was sitting in his club playing cards with friends of the 18th century. He completely ignored the fact that I’d grown several inches since we first met, had acquired breasts, and braces on my teeth, and had shed the braces again. He dismissed the fact that his father’s grand townhouse had become a school with running water, electric light, and central heating. The only thing he did seem to notice from time to time was the ever-decreasing length of our school uniform skirts.
“It’s not very civil of a lady to walk past a highborn gentleman without a word, Miss Gwyneth,” he called after me after we passed him on the stairs.
I ignored him and rolled my eyes.
“If I can help you in any way, I am, of course, entirely at your service,” James said, adjusting the lace on his cuffs as he followed me and Charlotte.
I continued to ignore him and walk even faster. For a second, it felt as if he would give it up and let me on with my life, which would be a first, but then his eyes met Charlotte, and a concerned expression painted his face. James had a soft spot for Charlotte. Unlike “that ill-mannered girl with the freckles,” as he called Lesley, he thought my cousin was “delightful, a vision of beguiling charm.”
As he proceeded to ask me questions about Charlotte’s health, followed by his list of precautions of smallpox, I whispered a stiff “okay”, making sure she wouldn’t listen.
“Pray give her my best wishes. And tell her she looks as enchanting as ever.”
“I’ll tell her,” I said, rolling my eyes, and a little too loud that what I intended.
“If you don’t stop talking to your imaginary friend,” snapped Charlotte, “you’ll end up in the nuthouse.”
“I don’t have an imaginary friend” I told her. I had an invisible pain in the ass, there was a difference.
“If you say so.” replied Charlotte. “It won’t make you less weird, anyway.” That was another of Charlotte’s typical digs. It was meant to hurt me.
“I’m not weird, Charlotte.” I said on defense
She simply scoffed and rolled her eyes, showing she not only didn’t believe me, but also thought I wasn’t worth the comeback.
“You’re a fine one to talk, gene carrier.”
“Well, at least I’m not the one who’s gonna end up like Great-aunt Mad Maddy. She even tells the postman about her ‘visions’.” She said with a wicked smile on her face.
“You’re a jerk.”
“And you’re naive.”
Still quarreling, we walked through the front hall, past the janitor’s glazed cubicle, and out into the schoolyard. The wind was picking up, and the ominous sky held the promise of rain.
“Sorry I said that about you being like Great-aunt Maddy,” said Charlotte, suddenly sounding remorseful. “I’m just a bit nervous, that’s all.”
I was surprised, to say the least Charlotte never apologized.
“I know,” I replied almost too quickly. I wanted her to know that I appreciated her apology. But in reality, I couldn’t have been further from understanding how she felt.
“I like Great-aunt Maddy, anyway” I added with a small smile. It was the best I could give her at the moment.
I did like Great-aunt Maddy. She might be a bit talkative and inclined to say everything four times over, but I liked that a lot better than the mysterious way the others carried on. And Great-aunt Maddy was always very generous when it came to handing out sherbet lemons.
But of course, Charlotte didn’t like sweets. She was a weird girl. She’d never had time to play or make friends, go to the cinema, or date boys. Instead she’d been taught dancing, fencing, and riding, foreign languages, and history for yet another unknown reason. And since last year she’d been going out every Wednesday afternoon with Lady Arista and Aunt Glenda, and they didn’t come home until late in the evening. I called it an introduction to the mysteries. But no one, especially not Charlotte, would say what kind of mysteries.
Her first sentence when she learned to talk had probably been “It’s a secret.” Closely followed by “That’s none of your business.”
Normally we took the bus home from school. The number 8 stopped in Berkeley Square, and it wasn’t far from there to our house. Today we went the four stops on foot, as Aunt Glenda had told us we should when Charlotte had a dizzy spell.
As we went up the steps to our front door, I was somewhat disappointed, because this was where my part in the ordeal came to an end, and I would be, once again, left in the dark.
I spotted the man in black as we were arriving. He was standing at the entrance of number 18, opposite. As usual, he wore a black trench coat and a hat pulled right down over his face. I’d taken him for a ghost until I realized that Nick, Caroline, and Lesley could see him too.
He’d been keeping watch on our house almost around the clock for months. If we tried to cross the road for a closer look at the man, he would either disappear into the building behind him or slip into a black Bentley, which was always parked by the curb, and drive away. The grown-ups acted as if they saw nothing suspicious about being watched day and night by a man wearing a hat and dressed entirely in black. Nor did Charlotte, who thought we should leave the poor man alone and let him smoke his cigarette in peace
It had started raining. We reached home not a moment too soon.
“Do you at least feel dizzy again?” I asked as we waited for the door to be opened. We didn’t have our own front-door keys. Lady Arista was also a mater in paranoia.
“It will happen when the time comes.” Charlotte said, diplomatic as ever.
Mr. Bernard opened the door for us. Lesley said Mr. Bernard was our butler and the ultimate proof that we were rich. But I didn’t know exactly who or what Mr. Bernard really was. To Mom, he was “grandmother’s lackey,” but Lady Arista called him “an old family friend.” To my siblings and me, he was simply Lady Arista’s rather weird manservant. At the sight of us, his eyebrows shot up.
“Hello, Mr. Bernard,” I said. “Nasty weather.”
“Where’s Lady Arista?” asked Charlotte, not bothering to say hello. She was never particularly polite to Mr. Bernard. Perhaps because, unlike the rest of us, she hadn’t felt any awe of him when she was a child. Although, and this really was awe-inspiring, he seemed able to materialize out of nowhere right behind you in any part of the house, moving as quietly as a cat. Nothing got past Mr. Bernard, and he always seemed to be on the alert for something.
He had been with us since before I was born, and Mum said he had been there when she was still a little girl. He had his own rooms on the second floor, with a separate corridor in which we children were forbidden even to set foot. None of us had ever dared to venture into the out-of-bounds area.
“Mr. Bernard needs his privacy,” Lady Arista often said.
Which was usually followed by mom’s quiet comment, that Lady Arista never heard:
“How right, I think we could all of us do with some of that.”
“Your grandmother is in the music room,” Mr. Bernard informed Charlotte.
“Thank you.” Charlotte left us in the hall and went upstairs.
The music room upstairs was Lady Arista’s and Great-aunt Maddy’s favorite place. It smelled of faded violet perfume and the stale smoke of Lady Arista’s cigarillos. The stuffy room wasn’t aired nearly often enough, and staying in it for too long made you feel drowsy.
Mr. Bernard closed the front door as I took one more quick look past him on the other side of the street. When the door closed, my stomach suddenly flipped again, the feeling of being in a rollercoaster coming back even stronger than it did before. Everything blurred before my eyes. My knees gave way, I leaned against the wall to keep from falling down.
But, again, as quickly as it had come on, the feeling was gone.
My heart was thumping like crazy. I was probably just hungry. Yes, that must be it. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and my lunch had landed on my blouse. Yes, that was definitely it.
Mr. Bernard’s looked attentively at me with his owlish eyes.
“I’ll … I’ll go and do my homework,” I muttered, uncomfortable with the attention, even when it was just Mr. Bernard
He just nodded casually. But as I climbed the stairs, I could feel his eyes on my back.
Back from Durham, where I visited Lord Montrose’s younger daughter, Grace Shepherd, whose daughter was unexpectedly born the day before yesterday. We are all delighted to record the birth of
Gwyneth Sophie Elizabeth Shepherd
5 lbs 8 oz., 20 in.
The mother and child both doing well.
Heartfelt congratulations to our Grand Master on the birth of his fifth grandchild.
FROM THE ANNALS OF THE GUARDIANS
OCTOBER 10, 1994
REPORT: THOMAS GEORGE, INNER CIRCLE