Sweet Agony Read online

  God, I love rendering him speechless.

  ‘Did you really just accuse me of having a foot for a hand?’

  ‘I think “accuse” is a little strong. I have nothing but sympathy for your plight.’

  ‘There is no plight, you ridiculous creature. My hands and feet are where they are supposed to be, I can assure you.’

  ‘So the problem is your face.’

  ‘I see what you are clumsily attempting.’

  ‘I thought I was attempting it quite well, actually.’

  ‘Then allow me to disillusion you immediately. Your technique is that of a sixteen-year-old boy fumbling at the underwear of my mind.’

  ‘I could try harder. Probe more deeply.’

  ‘You believe I wish to be probed? No, dear me, no, that won’t do at all. See, it is exactly as I predicted: you are in every way unsuitable for this position. I cannot possibly have some snooping reprobate rummaging through my life,’ he says, at which point I know I should be insulted or annoyed. He said I was a teenage boy. He called me clumsy. He thinks I am some criminal who snoops.

  Yet somehow all I can think is:

  He said ‘reprobate’.

  He said ‘disillusion’.

  He uses the sorts of words I’ve waited all my life to hear spoken aloud – words I barely know how to pronounce because the only time I’ve ever encountered them has been in books. I had no idea that ‘reprobate’ curled that way, or that ‘disillusion’ sounded so small to begin with and then so big at the end. Though, granted, part of that might be down to the way he talks. His tongue practically makes love to each syllable.

  I feel like his sentence should smoke a cigarette, directly after the full stop.

  I think I might need to smoke a cigarette, directly after the full stop. Something is sure happening to me. I seem to be sweating just about everywhere and my breaths are coming hard and high, like he is a hill and I just ran up him.

  Only that sounds agonising, and this is the opposite.

  This is so sweet I would do anything for another taste.

  ‘Do you think you could say that word again?’

  ‘You honestly want me to repeat one of the things I just said, despite the fact that most of them were sneering insults?’

  ‘Are you kidding? The sneering insults were the best parts.’

  ‘Well, that settles it. I can’t hire you. You are quite mad.’

  ‘You cannot possibly decide that, based on me enjoying you saying the word “reprobate”. You turned the letter R into Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. People will probably be playing that letter O at funerals. There is nothing unreasonable about enjoying how the whole thing sounded – not to mention the fact that you said it at all. I mean, who says “reprobate” these days?’ I ask, and again there follows a silence. A big one, that he seems very bitter about once he finally responds. How dare I make him momentarily speechless, I think, and what he says bears that out.

  ‘People who have read these things called books – you might have heard of them, papery things with lots of squiggles inside,’ he says, and I attempt to hate him here, I really do. I stiffen at the implication, and when I speak my voice is cold.

  ‘Oh, you mean the things I used to hide under my floorboards so no one would take them away from me?’ I tell him.

  But then he goes and says this:

  ‘Are you suggesting that you had books stolen from you? That these books were somehow forbidden you? By whom? Tell me at once who this monstrous individual is so that I can immediately have them arrested,’ he says.

  And I think he actually means it. There isn’t so much as a whiff of facetiousness about his words. He honestly thinks my parents were monstrous, just because they hated me reading. No one has ever thought they were monstrous because they hated me reading. A teacher once shouted at them for forcing me into shoes three sizes too small, and occasionally an official-looking person would come around and write things down about my bruises and the spoiled food and the constant cans of Carling everywhere.

  But that was about it, when it came to outrage over their behaviour.

  A fact that I then point out to him, in a roundabout way.

  ‘You can’t have someone arrested for flushing books down a toilet.’

  ‘Well, that just speaks volumes about our current justice system. If I had my way I would not only arrest this miscreant but have them flogged in the town square,’ he says, and I feel sure he means that too. So much so that the urge to look at him again is suddenly too keen to withstand. I have to take deep breaths just to stop myself doing it.

  Then sublimate it into something else.

  ‘Tell me honestly: did you time-travel here from 1865?’

  ‘I wish I had. And possessed the means to travel back.’

  ‘Even though people bathed a lot less then.’

  ‘I could accept body odour in exchange for a bit of peace.’

  ‘You think being alive in 1865 would give you peace?’

  ‘I think at the very least I would fit in more than I do here,’ he says, though I don’t think he means to. At least I don’t think he means to sound so despairing about it. After the words pop out he seems to make a little tutting noise, and it isn’t aimed at me. It’s aimed at himself. He let out some dark hint of who he is, and it irritates him.

  It irritates him so much that he immediately tries to get rid of me in what may be the most ludicrous way possible. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you, farewell,’ he says, as though we just finished on a pleasant note and he is now up and shaking my hand.

  Despite the fact that we are both still seated.

  And he hasn’t asked me a damned thing.

  ‘But you haven’t even interviewed me yet.’

  ‘Of course I have – I enquired about your reading habits.’

  ‘That hardly constitutes an interview.’

  ‘Very well then, tell me what you would expect of an interview.’

  ‘You should ask me my name.’

  ‘Assume that I have.’

  ‘Molly Parker.’

  ‘I see. And then…?’ he asks, and here’s the best thing:

  I think he genuinely has no idea.

  He needs me to tell him.

  ‘Then you tell me yours.’

  ‘Why? I’m not interviewing for any position.’

  ‘So you want me to go around your house calling you something I just made up,’ I suggest, and practically hear him shudder. It almost makes me want to do it anyway – think up ridiculous monikers and have him be disgusted by all of them.

  Snooty McBogtrot, I could call him, then I have to suppress a laugh.

  Twenty-two years of never having anything to laugh about, and suddenly it overwhelms me to the point where I have to hold it off. I have to use both hands.

  ‘That sounds like the very worst thing I can imagine. You may call me Mr Harcroft.’

  ‘Seems rather unfriendly and impersonal.’

  ‘I think you will find that I am a rather unfriendly and impersonal man. You will also shortly discover that I am singularly exacting, ruthless in my attention to detail and completely without regard for any and all emotional whims. I brook no challenges to my authority and expect to be deferred to without exception when it comes to the precise system I use to govern my household,’ he says, then quite obviously waits for me to be horrified. The problem is, though, that if he is, he will be waiting for ever. I don’t know how to be horrified by all of this. It seems so strange and fantastical that all I can do is marvel at all of it, from the seating arrangements to his furniture right the way through to his every odd word.

  He governs his household, I think.

  Is it any wonder I say what I then do?

  ‘So I got the job then?’ I ask.

  After which there is a silence so delicious I could grab it in my hands and eat it alive. He honestly thought I would balk at that, I can tell. He even tries to go one better a moment later, with his directions as to what I should do n
ext. ‘You will be sleeping in the attic,’ he says, as though the attic is his version of the top of a terrible tower. He wants to be the evil wizard who has somehow imprisoned a princess.

  But he has to know he can never be. My life before was the prison: this is the escape. And it continues to be, no matter what he says or does. ‘Go there directly and remain until your duties begin in the morning,’ he tells me, and the very last thing I feel is fear. I fizz with the idea of finally seeing his face instead. I wonder and wonder about how a man who uses the word ‘miscreant’ will look, and am actually disappointed when I turn and find he has already disappeared.

  Though even that soon fades.

  There are other delights to uncover – like the pictures on the walls on the way up the narrow staircase, each one creepier than the one before it. I think they might even deserve the label gothic, which sounded so exciting to me when I first read about it that I secretly dyed a net curtain black and wore it as a headdress in the middle of the night. Now I get to live amidst it, in the form of faded photographs of old bearded men who could well be his ancestors.

  He has ancestors.

  And if that were not exciting enough, there is the room I am supposed to stay in. Does he understand how exciting this room is to me? I imagine he could never do so, since this is his ordinary and everyday life. But to me none of this is ordinary and everyday. The very presence of a brass double bed is enough to place it outside those boundaries. Even the mattress crosses the line, because at home I used to sleep on folded-over towels and two sleeping bags.

  Certainly I’ve never had anything like this.

  Nor have I had experience of a room that just belongs to me. I have no concept of drawers that I can just stuff with my things – to the point where I can barely fill one of them, and then only because of my two big jumpers. And though the window is more of a skylight, it lets in the dying glow of the day like nothing I’ve ever seen. I stand on the bed just to look through it, and see all of London spread out before me.

  I see my life, as it could really be.

  Chapter Three

  I try not to feel too excited when I wake up. It seems best to keep my expectations low, considering some of the things he said and did the day before. I mean, no one could possibly call him a pleasant person – he confirmed that much with his laughter and his insults alone and even if he hadn’t there have been other signs.

  Like the uniform he has hung up in the bathroom for me, swaddled in plastic and so ominous-looking that I take a step back when I see it. For a second I think someone is standing in there waiting for me, and want to scream. Then I realise the someone waiting for me is the person I am supposed to be, and almost do it anyway. Somehow, I suspect I’m going to fail very badly at this. The stockings are silk, which I am almost certainly going to snag, and the shoes have the sort of heels I can never walk in.

  Plus, he has to know that the whole thing is never going to fit me. The skirt portion of the dress is way too narrow around the hips, and that bodice will never contain my enormous bust. All those buttons down the front are going to pop open the moment I move – but maybe that was his intention. He wants to see me thoroughly humiliated, after failing to put me in my place yesterday. I was much too amused by him and far too talkative, and this is the lesson I get in return.

  Or at least it would be usually, I think.

  But then I forget that he is not usual at all. I judge him by the standard my family set, instead of the alien one he actually operates under. I think of my mum telling me to stop wearing short sleeves and my brothers jeering at my jiggly parts, rather than understanding that this is never going to be like that.

  For a start, I have to speak to him through the parlour door. I knock on it and he tells me to stay where I am, rather than do anything normal like asking me in. Then, once I tell him that the uniform is never going to fit me, he lets out the most derisive little snort. I can practically see the eye-roll that goes with it, shortly followed by a sentence I could never have expected in a million years.

  Though he seems to think I should have.

  ‘Of course it will fit you. I had it made to your exact measurements,’ he says, as though there could be no other explanation. He even seems somewhat offended that I could imagine anything else, despite how insane that is. He only met me yesterday. He must have seen me for all of two minutes. There is no way he could have done what he claims.

  And I make the mistake of telling him so.

  ‘How could you possibly know what my measurements are?’ I ask, and receive an answer that damn near makes my hair stand on end. As he goes on, my eyes almost roll out of my head, but I cannot blame them. Who could, in light of this?

  ‘If you recall, I observed you walking up to my front door. It was not exactly difficult to extrapolate based on the variables at hand. You only managed to step over my gate by standing on tiptoe, which tells me that you are no more than five foot three, and once you had traversed it I could clearly see the distance in inches between each of your hips and the edges of said gate. As I know the exact width it was fairly easy from there to surmise your lower measurements, and only a little more difficult to ascertain what sort of bodice you might require. As you quite clearly wear a bra two sizes too small for you, it took me a little longer to absolutely be sure, but, judging by your relative self-consciousness, the way you hold your arms when you walk and the other parameters of your body, I believe I have the right of it,’ he says, after which I want to be appalled, I do. I probably should be, all things considered. He examined me so minutely I am surprised my skin isn’t trying to walk off my body.

  But I understand why it stays on. Everything he says is so lacking in sexual intention that even my keen senses cannot detect it. No part of me suspects he is lying in order to cover up some transgression. I don’t imagine he secretly snuck into a room and measured me with a ruler, and even if I did I am not sure I would mind much. There is something so calm and clinical and clever about everything he just said that all I feel is awe.

  And the awe makes me do some frantic and ill-advised things. It just builds inside me to the point where I can no longer contain it, and suddenly I seem to be tearing at the plastic around the dress. I have to see for myself if he is right, but the problem is that seeing is apparently not enough. Once I have the material in my hands – that liquid silk all lined and smartly stitched just for me – I go one step further. I start pulling off my clothes right there in the hall, so eager to have it against my skin that I barely stop to think about being naked ten feet from where he is. I do not care that he is calling through the door at me. ‘Ms Parker, I insist you answer me at once,’ he says, but I just keep going.

  I even take my bra off – though, in my defence, I sort of have to. The dress has this whole support structure actually built into it, and oh, my sainted aunts, when I put it on…how can I regret stripping to nothing when I put that thing on? He was absolutely right about the ‘two sizes too small’, because after I do up some of the buttons I want to break down and cry.

  I think my body breathes out for the first time. Everything feels gently held rather than squeezed, yet when I move nothing wobbles or jiggles or tries to escape. There are no unsightly lumps or bumps, and every part of it ends exactly where it’s supposed to. Even the sleeves are the right length. Even the flare of the skirt is perfect, to the point where I want to ask again how he did this.

  Though I appreciate that part of it is just a desire to hear him say so. To hear him tell me all those tiny details a second time, in that voice of his like liquid intelligence. Just the thought of it makes my heart beat long and slow in my chest, in a way that seems insane. No one should feel like this over something so small. People need more than cleverness to start breathing hard and having illicit thoughts. At the very least you should have seen a face or a body or even a hand or two.

  None of which is the case here.

  He could be hideous, I think.

  He probably is hide
ous, all things considered. What other reason can there be for him to keep himself hidden from me? None, I think, none, and even if there is one, his manner suggests something grotesque. He is still barking orders at me through the door. I tell him I’m just trying on the shoes and he keeps on going. He has to be an eight-hundred-year-old hobgoblin – an idea that should probably calm me down somewhat.

  It should, yet somehow that is not the case at all.

  Partly because I think the missing key to my excitement might be a brilliant mind.

  But also because at that moment he decides to march to the door and fling it open, and when he does I think my insides plummet around seventeen floors. They wind up somewhere just north of hell, thanks to a face he should not have. No one should have a face like that. It has to be a crime against womankind for someone to walk around wearing that weapon of mass destruction, and anyone doing so needs to be immediately jailed. Someone call the police, I think.

  Though I have no idea how they might help me. I suppose they could close my mouth or maybe stop me gasping, but even if they did there are still my eyes to contend with – my enormous and no doubt wild-looking eyes that will not stop staring at him. For a second I actually consider poking them out, to spare me further embarrassment.

  But I fear it may be too late. He is quite possibly the cleverest person I have ever met. There is no doubt he already knows why I am gawping at him like a drowned fish. No one could look like that and not understand – though oddly he does an excellent job of pretending. The longer this agonising moment goes on, the more disconcerted he seems, until finally I want to glance away, just to erase that hint of a frown between his elegant eyebrows.

  It only makes him more beautiful.