The Empty Frame. Ann Pilling

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СКАЧАТЬ floor, meek and unprotesting, with his head against her knees. Normally, he shrank away from people, as if anyone who approached was bound to hurt him.

      “Floss, Magnus and Sam… wonderful names,” Cousin M said unexpectedly, surveying them all.

      Floss said shyly, “Is your name Emily… or Emma? Mum never told us what the M was for.”

      “Emma? Heaven’s no it’s – promise you won’t laugh?”

      They promised, even Magnus. He wasn’t asleep but, from his place of safety against Cousin M’s knees, was peering up at the portraits. One was much larger than the rest, the picture of a woman with very white hands and a very white face.

      “My name’s Maude.”

      In spite of himself, Sam snorted. This was catching and Floss found herself tittering.

      Cousin Maude laughed too. “I know, it’s hideous. I blame my mother, she really should have known better. She was a Maude too. She was friends with Gertrude Jekyll.”

      “Jekyll and Hyde…” muttered Sam. It was one of the creepiest stories he had ever read, about a man who had two personalities, and whose wicked one eventually took over the good one.

      “Oh no. Gertrude Jekyll was a very famous gardener. But Gertrude’s a pretty hideous name too, don’t you think?”

      Floss said, “Well, my real name’s Florence and I absolutely hate it.” She felt much reassured by Cousin Maude, they both had hideous names and they both had a weight problem. What she most liked about her was the way she was looking after Magnus, as if she understood all about his troubles and his shyness, without having to be told.

      Suddenly, he came to life. “Who’s that lady?” he said, pointing to the portraits.

      At first Cousin M didn’t answer. It was very quiet in the vast timbered hall, no sounds but the leap of flame round burning logs, the snap of the fire and a series of clicks as the electric trolley, now unplugged, cooled down. Sam couldn’t understand why it felt so cold, the fire was huge but there was a definite chill all round them.

      They waited and eventually Cousin M got up, walked across the floor and pressed a switch.

      A strip light over one of the paintings flickered into life then steadied, and the three children stared. The picture was enormous, dwarfing all the others. A heavily-ornamented gilt frame, wreathed in leaves, flowers and berries, contained the full-length portrait of a young woman. She was dressed all in black except for a long white stole, like that of a priest, which was draped round her neck and fell on both sides to the hem of her dress, ending in gold fringes. She held black gloves, similarly fringed, and there was a little dog at her feet which, like her hands, looked impossibly thin and narrow.

      “Is it Elizabeth the First?” said Floss. “She’s got red hair and her face is – well, it looks awfully like her.”

      “No. But they were friends,” Cousin M said. “The Queen stayed here, when she was young, in fact they made a special Council Chamber for her, she came so often. You can see it tomorrow. That’s why there’s a coat of arms over the fireplace.”

      “That dog’s cowering,” Sam said.

      “I’m not surprised,” Floss muttered. “She has rather a cruel face. She looks—”

      “Calculating?” Cousin Maude suggested.

      “Yes. That’s exactly it.”

      “Tell me about her,” said Magnus. Cousin M had come back to her seat by the fire. He’d moved to a rug and was sitting on it, cross-legged, staring intently into her face. What he’d said sounded a bit like a royal command and he had a fixed staring look of total concentration on his face, which Floss and Sam had become familiar with.

      Cousin M looked down at him. “I don’t know very much, dear. Her first husband was much older than she was and very ambitious, I suppose that’s why there’s this connection with royalty – I think they had a kind of mini-court here, in the summer.”

      “But she looks ambitious,” Floss said.

      “She does. But I think she mellowed in her old age. The husband was a bit of a tyrant and I think she probably went along with it all. They do say she did things she lived to regret.”

      “What things?” demanded Magnus.

      Cousin M blinked up at the portrait. “I really couldn’t say, dear, it’s all speculation, it all happened so long ago.”

      “What happened?”

      “I honestly don’t know what those two got up to.” She laughed. “I’m just the gardener round here.”

      Nobody was fooled. Whatever Cousin M knew she was going to keep to herself.

      Magnus’s eyes followed her as she went to switch off the strip light. “She has cruel hands,” he said, as the portrait disappeared into the shadow. “They’re like spikes.”

      “It’s bed time,” she said. Her voice was soft but Magnus knew it meant business. And he didn’t mind at all. He felt safe with her. “Come on,” she chivvied gently, “we can talk about everything in the morning.”

      

      In the entrance hall, they discovered that their pile of luggage had been removed. Cousin M looked embarrassed. “Cecil must have taken it upstairs for you, that’s good.” But she spoke as if she meant the very opposite, as if she minded that Cecil, this remote cousin of Mum’s, who owned the Abbey together with Cousin M, had not bothered to come and speak to them.

      “He goes to bed early,” she explained. “He’s a very early riser. He has his swim at six o’clock.”

      “Can we swim?” Sam asked.

      “Oh, I should think so. I’ll have to talk to Cecil. He’s in charge of that side of things. Listen, dears, I’m sorry he’s gone to bed. He was annoyed with me, for getting so behind. He likes to stick to his routines. We were all up to schedule until Arthur disappeared.”

      Floss suddenly remembered that this man Cecil’s surname was Stickley. He sounded like a Stickley, like a dried-up, withered old stick. She said, “Is Cecil our cousin as well?”

      “I suppose he must be, about a million times removed,” said Cousin M, stopping at the end of a long passage way and turning left at the bottom of a staircase. On the wall, a neat modern sign said To Turret Dormitories.

      “So Cecil’s a sort of cousin,” Magnus said slowly. He liked getting an absolutely clear picture of everything, in his mind. “So who’s Arthur?”

      “My boyfriend,” Cousin M said. “You’ll see him in the morning.”

      Now Magnus had seen the word “dormitories”, which suggested beds and therefore sleep, he seemed to have found a spare bit of energy and he began to climb the stairs. They were not ordinary stairs either, they were a stone spiral, enclosed within the fat tower they had seen at the corner of the Abbey buildings before the floodlights went off. He climbed quite enthusiastically, chatting a little to Cousin M. “There is Arthur СКАЧАТЬ