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

sign a lighthouse. But still he feels as if he is filching something, betraying someone, as he listens to Tatsuo’s delicate translation of his delicate inquiry about the price of the box. For whatever it costs, it is travelling back to Falmouth with him.

M

ISS

G

ILLINGHAM’S

M

IRROR

Ally? Are you ready?’

Ally puts down her book and stands up. She cannot see what other preparation might be thought necessary. ‘Coming, Aunt Mary.’

Aunt Mary’s Christmas present to Ally was a breadth of tweed, heathered blue and grey, and the promise that Aunt Mary’s dressmaker would make it into a new walking suit. Good tailoring makes anyone feel better, Aunt Mary said, and whatever Elizabeth has to say about trivial minds I notice that most of these New Women have nice clothes. Call it armour if you prefer, Ally, but let me do this for you. Ally remembers Aunt Mary going through the contents of Ally’s trunk when she first arrived in London, nineteen and dressed in Mamma’s made-over cast-offs and men’s boots. Aunt Mary’s right about the armour, but Ally’s been invalided out of whatever war is being fought. If you are to be interviewed for a position, says Aunt Mary, you will give a better account of yourself in a decent suit. True enough, but Ally has failed, so far, to identify any position for which she would be a plausible candidate. A qualified lady doctor with no experience of paid employment and recent nervous illness seeks professional employment in West Cornwall. Did I not tell you so, Alethea? Did I not warn you of just such an outcome?

Aunt Mary judges the outing grand enough for her new hat, a triumph of form over function whose effect reminds Ally of the hummingbirds in Mr. De Rivers’ Falmouth house. She looks up as Ally comes down the stairs.

‘There you are. I am looking forward to seeing how Miss Gillingham has managed. And James has booked us a table at Quincy’s for lunch afterwards.’

Ally is being managed like a schoolgirl, taken out for a treat after she’s done as she is told. Did they think she would resist the fitting, that she is not grateful for her Christmas gift? She fastens her coat and opens the door for Aunt Mary.

‘Thank you. You and Uncle James.’

Aunt Mary pats her hand. ‘Not at all, my dear, not at all. Here, your hair is coming down.’

Ally stands obedient, hunched, the doorknob in her hand, while Aunt Mary reaches up to replace her hairpins. It’s sunny outside, and there are leaf-buds on the branches of chestnut trees bounced by a boisterous wind. The snowdrops in the square are visible from the doorstep.

‘That’s better.’

They set off, Ally checking her stride to match Aunt Mary’s unhurried progress. Aunt Mary looks smaller out of doors. It is not her natural habitat.

‘Will we walk all the way, Aunt Mary? It is such a nice morning.’

‘All the way to Markham Street? It must be miles!’

Aunt Mary suddenly reminds her of May.

‘Perhaps as much as two miles, although I doubt it very much.’

‘No, my dear. We will sit down on the bus and very probably take a perfectly comfortable cab home.’

Ally is startled by her own appearance in Miss Gillingham’s mirror. The tweed is a stronger colour than she, raised by Mamma and accustomed to echo the sober garb of men, would usually choose, a royal blue only just short of Aunt Mary’s own favourite peacock palette, and there are flecks of purple as well as grey in it. Almost too strong, she thinks, gazing at herself, almost overwhelming her pale skin, her light brown hair, her blue eyes. And then realises that this thought means that she does know what suits her, that she does have an instinct for her own aesthetic value. Grey matches her eyes, but must not be darker than her hair. Pink and brown make her look dip-dyed, the same colour all over. Green, perhaps, but no stronger than the colour of pears or her pallor will appear unhealthy. Papa’s trademark sage colour would be becoming if she could stand it. It is not entirely Mamma’s fault that Ally looked shapeless and unkempt all her girlhood; particular attention is required to make a tall pale woman with light hair appear to advantage and it is not attention that Ally herself usually cares to pay. But this suit—if she could wear such a thing every day—Annie, she thinks, likes clothes, and so does Mrs. Butler herself. Aubrey, come to that, or Street; most artists embrace pretentions or particularities of dress. One does not solve the problem of beauty by denouncing it. The new suit murmurs of men’s tailoring, the jacket double-breasted and trimmed only with frogging, the skirt cut trim and plain with the suggestion of a bustle at the back, and it fits Ally perfectly, shows that though tall and slim she does have a bosom, a waist. Flaunting yourself in the guise of our poor women of the streets, hisses Mamma, betraying everything I gave you. Ally smooths her hands over her hips, turns and looks back over her shoulder to see her three-quarter profile at full length. Aunt Mary is quite right; so attired, she will indeed give a better account of herself. Looking at her own clothes laid over the chair, she doesn’t want to take off the tweed suit, to go back into the world in worn and dated grey, but Miss Gillingham needs to finish the hem and sew the buttons where at the moment Ally is pinned into the waistband and jacket. Next week, Miss Gillingham promises, best leave it till Tuesday to be safe.

Back her in room among the treetops, stayed with sole in cream sauce and then orange pudding ordered for her by Uncle James, Ally looks through the notes she’s made of her rather arbitrary reading these last few weeks. How is sanity defined? The mad reside in homes, asylums, institutions. Are families or madhouses more likely to take, or make,