I wanted to shout down to him, to warn him that he was giving flowers to a monster, but I did not. I just stood on the balcony and watched, and they did not look up and they did not see me.
My book of Greek myths had told me that the narcissi were named after a beautiful young man, so lovely that he had fallen in love with himself. He saw his reflection in a pool of water, and would not leave it, and, eventually, he died, so that the gods were forced to transform him into a flower. In my mind, when I had read this, I had imagined that a narcissus must be the most beautiful flower in the world. I was disappointed when I learned that it was just a less impressive daffodil.
My sister came out of the house and went over to them. My father picked her up and swung her in the air. They all walked inside together, my father with my sister holding on to his neck, and Ursula Monkton, her arms filled with yellow and white flowers. I watched them. I watched as my father’s free hand, the one not holding my sister, went down and rested, casually, proprietarily, on the swell of Ursula Monkton’s midi skirted bottom.
I would react differently to that now. At the time, I do not believe I thought anything of it at all. I was seven.
I climbed up into my bedroom window, easy to reach from the balcony, and down onto my bed, where I read a book about a girl who stayed in the Channel Islands and defied the Nazis because she would not abandon her pony.
And while I read, I thought, Ursula Monkton cannot keep me here forever. Soon enough—in a few days at the most—someone will take me into town, or away from here, and then I will go to the farm at the bottom of the lane, and I will tell Lettie Hempstock what I did.
Then I thought, Suppose Ursula Monkton only needs a couple of days. And that scared me.
Ursula Monkton made meatloaf for dinner that evening, and I would not eat it. I was determined not to eat anything she had made or cooked or touched. My father was not amused.
“But I don’t want it,” I told him. “I’m not hungry.”
It was Wednesday, and my mother was attending her meeting, to raise money so that people in Africa who needed water could drill wells, in the village hall of the next village down the road. She had posters that she would put up, diagrams of wells, and photographs of smiling people. At the dinner table were my sister, my father, Ursula Monkton, and me.
“It’s good, it’s good for you, and it’s tasty,” said my father. “And we do not waste food in this house.”
“I said I wasn’t hungry.”
I had lied. I was so hungry it hurt.
“Then just try a little nibble,” he said. “It’s your favorite. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. You love them.”
There was a children’s table in the kitchen, where we ate when my parents had friends over, or would be eating late. But that night we were at the adult table. I preferred the children’s table. I felt invisible there. Nobody watched me eat.
Ursula Monkton sat next to my father and stared at me, with a tiny smile at the corner of her lips.
I knew I should shut up, be silent, be sullen. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to tell my father why I did not want to eat.
“I won’t eat anything she made,” I told him. “I don’t like her.”
“You will eat your food,” said my father. “You will at least try it. And apologize to Miss Monkton.”
“I won’t.”
“He doesn’t have to,” said Ursula Monkton sympathetically, and she looked at me, and she smiled. I do not think that either of the other two people at the table noticed that she was smiling with amusement, or that there was nothing sympathetic in her expression, or her smile, or her rotting-cloth eyes.
“I’m afraid he does,” said my father. His voice was just a little louder, and his face was just a little redder. “I won’t have him cheeking you like that.” Then, to me, “Give me one good reason, just one, why you won’t apologize and why you won’t eat the lovely food that Ursula prepared for us.”
I did not lie well. I told him.
“Because she’s not human,” I said. “She’s a monster. She’s a . . .” What had the Hempstocks called her kind of thing? “She’s a flea.”
My father’s cheeks were burning red, now, and his lips were thin. He said, “Outside. Into the hall. This minute.”
My heart sank inside me. I climbed down from my stool and followed him out into the corridor. It was dark in the hallway: the only light came from the kitchen, a sheet of clear glass above the door. He looked down at me. “You will go back into the kitchen. You will apologize to Miss Monkton. You will finish your plate of food, then, quietly and politely, you will go straight upstairs to bed.”
“No,” I told him. “I won’t.”
I bolted, ran down the hallway, round the corner, and I pounded up the stairs. My father, I had no doubt, would come after me. He was twice my size, and fast, but I did not have to keep going for long. There was only one room in that house that I could lock, and it was there that I was headed, left at the top of the stairs and along the hall to the end. I reached the bathroom ahead of my father. I slammed the door, and I pushed the little silver bolt closed.