Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

help it would be most kind of you to invite our residents to participate in the Ladies’ Programme. Several of them have considerable experience of such matters and would doubtless be of assistance to you.

Water trickles: Miss Mason in the bathroom, easing flour from under her fingernails and from the creases in her hands. Mrs. Henning still prefers, or feels obliged, to spend time in her bedroom rather than taking possession of the sitting room, and she is probably up there trying to finish the handkerchief she has been embroidering for Mrs. Curnow. A drawer closes overhead: Mrs. Curnow checking again that she has left nothing behind. Another one opens. The repeated checking is not reassuring, and Mrs. Curnow’s apparent inability to recognise and control the checking less reassuring still. Mr. Curnow should be here any moment. Ally hurries up the stairs.

Mrs. Curnow is kneeling at her bureau with an open drawer in her hand. There is still mud on her face. She, Ally and Mrs. Rudge all verified the bureau’s emptiness yesterday.

Ally kneels beside her and touches her arm. ‘You know that if anything were to be left behind we would send it on to you. You can lose nothing.’

Mrs. Curnow closes the drawer and puts her hand on another one. ‘I know. It’s just—I worry. I don’t want him thinking I can’t be trusted to pack. To know my own things.’

‘Yes. But also, you don’t want those around you to think that you do not know your own mind and doubt your own actions. It is a hard thing to prove oneself well, Mrs. Curnow, and it is not foolish to be anxious. Come.’

Ally stands up and holds out a hand to help Mrs. Curnow, who has been kneeling on the wooden floor for some time. Mrs. Curnow lumbers to her feet. Ally leads her to window, from which they can see the trees sparkling with sunlight and the sea glimmering behind them and the darkness at the top of a cloudless sky.

‘It will be a difficulty for some time that your family and friends will be watching you for signs of distress and anxiety, and watching more closely if they see such signs, because naturally you will be anxious about being watched, especially if you fear losing your liberty. If you are indeed well, and if your friends indeed value you most when you are well and happy, the passage of time is likely to ease the circle of surveillance and fear. Otherwise, I can tell you only that when in doubt a woman is more likely to be criticised for action than for inaction, for speech rather than silence.’ If a woman in most situations wishes to be considered sane, she should conduct herself in the way best calculated to drive any reasonable adult to distraction. This is probably an exaggeration, and anyway not a useful thing to tell Mrs. Curnow, already tangled and trapped in self-surveillance.

‘There. I hear wheels. Come, we will talk to your husband. He must be your friend in this matter.’

They give Mr. Curnow lunch, as if his wife has been staying with friends instead of detained as being of unsound mind. Ally takes her accustomed place at the head of the table and seats him on her right, where the master of a house would put an honoured lady guest. Miss Mason sets out silver and china with unusual precision. Mrs. Rudge speaks of vegetable gardening, Miss Mason of the warm weather and its probable effect on the harvest. Mrs. Henning, in between carrying in the stew and taking out the plates, discloses opinions on the Irish Question more insistent than the occasion justifies, but Ally is able to draw out Mr. Curnow’s consequent account of meeting an Irishman in a Plymouth hotel when Mrs. Henning fetches the currant pudding. Ally fills bowls and passes cream.

They gather at the door to watch Mr. and Mrs. Curnow leave. Mrs. Curnow needs to play her part, Ally thinks, she needs to be well, or the first evidence from Rose Tree House will be failure. Mrs. Curnow turns around in her seat and waves her new handkerchief until the wheels bump away between the banks of cow parsley and buttercups that sway and dance along the lane.

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The window is sequinned with rain, and beyond it clouds huddle low over the town. He will write this next letter, and then speak to Penvenick about the Scilly job before Joseph Kidd recognises a chance to put himself forward. It would be better for Penvenick to have Tom, the senior man, in charge, for even if he insists on overseeing the design himself his faith in Tom should save him several rough crossings and hard going on the clifftop. The islands themselves will be pleasant enough, this time of year, but the sea is still the Atlantic Ocean, unpredictable and bad-tempered even when the shore breathes the fragrance of gorse and the berries soak up sunshine in the hedgerows. It would be good to be there. Not to be here. He signs his name and presses the blotting paper over the letter. As he peels it back he remembers the movements of the maker of paper fans, the careful unveiling of filigree birds and foliage.

Tom leaves the office earlier than he has been doing, to have time to wash and change at home before appearing again on the doorstep at Ludgate House. It is dull again today, the pavement oiled not quite with rain but with water settling from the air. The tide is rising, the estuary dark and sullen. He fastens his jacket and steps briskly through the mizzle. He does not know what he was thinking, to turn up unannounced like that. He does not know why he is going back today, except that he said he would and it would perhaps be more embarrassing, having asked for an invitation, to change his mind and send apologies than simply to go through with the