The Forgotten Room(44)
Mrs. Jackins’s voice echoed in her head: Masters and servants. Masters and servants, mixing together. A right fix.
Harry set down his razor, patted his cheeks with a towel, and turned toward her. “Why, what’s the matter?” he said, stepping forward.
Olive stumbled back. “I should leave.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Harry grinned his most charmingly piratical grin and strode toward her, robe swinging dangerously. He lifted his arms and spread his palms as if to grasp her by the cheeks, to pin her to his lips like a butterfly in a collection, and Olive turned and flew out the door, out of Harry’s comfortable room, out of sight of that bed that had only just been vacated, that bookshelf full of volumes a mere housemaid would never, ever have time to read.
By the time the multitude of Pratt clocks struck a united eleven o’clock, the glorious Christmas Eve dinner had been served and cleared, the coffee had been drunk, and the family had gathered together in the drawing room, trimming the tree under the imperious direction of Mrs. Pratt. (Christmas trees, apparently, must be trimmed just so for the proper effect, which, according to Mrs. Pratt’s taste, might best be described as baroque.)
Not that Olive cared. She was worn to pieces. She had just brought down the last tray of coffee cups and saucers and been dismissed by Mrs. Jackins, who thought she looked a little peaked. Peaked! She could hardly stand, and her mood was not improved by a glimpse of the Pratt family as she dragged herself past the open double doors of the magnificent second-floor drawing room (ballroom might be a better word, and indeed Miss Prunella’s engagement party was due to take place there next week), richly dressed, laughing and making merry. Well, Harry was laughing, anyway, balancing on a stepladder to light a few more candles on that twenty-foot tree brought down from the Adirondacks on a special railroad car. The tip nearly brushed the ceiling plasterwork. A nearby phonograph played a tinny Christmas carol, and the air swelled with the scent of pine and cigar smoke and prosperity.
As Olive paused, heart bursting, Harry glanced inevitably toward the doorway from his perch, and his eyes met hers. His smile widened, and he winked—yes, actually winked!—as if it were all a great joke, and Olive had also been celebrating her Christmas Eve amid ten-course meals and the loving rituals of her gathered family, instead of dragging her weary body about a mansion that was not hers, seeing to the comfort of people she did not especially like.
She turned and hurried down the landing and up the stairs, away from the ring of tipsy Pratt laughter and tinny Pratt phonographs, and as she arrived at the third-floor landing she came face-to-face with the closed door of Mr. Pratt’s study.
Closed, but not locked.
She rested her hand on the newel post and stared at the door, and for an instant she almost thought she saw her father’s face, gazing at her in reproach. A line of Shakespeare drifted through her head—Oh, Shakespeare! she thought with a pang—like a passing ghost: Do not forget. This visitation / Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
Thy almost blunted purpose.
She had always scorned Hamlet, just a little. Five acts of vacillation, scene after scene of contemplation instead of action, putting on silly plays instead of simply confronting the usurper that was Claudius: man-to-man, face-to-face. But she was worse, wasn’t she? One smile from Harry Pratt, and she had forgotten almost entirely what she was here to do. She was willing to labor all day, to iron Pratt linens and scrub Pratt boot prints from the floor, and for what? For the chance to meet Harry in the hidden room at the top of the house? To bare herself before him, to serve Harry’s needs the way her father had served those of Mr. Pratt?
Because she hadn’t taken a single step toward justice, had she? Not since she had sunk herself a week ago into the lavender-scented cushions in the attic room and taken off her dressing gown for Harry Pratt.
Harry and his wink.
Master Harry leaves for college in less than a fortnight, and where will you be?
She was weak, wasn’t she? A weak, deluded little fool: extracting Harry’s tender little notes from the hole in the brick wall as if they were jewels, leaving one or two in return. Stealing upstairs when she should be sleeping, dreaming about Harry when she should be planning his family’s just deserts.
Atop the newel post, her hand curled into a fist. She stepped forward with determination and opened the study door.
She was not entirely unprepared for this moment. Around her neck, on a simple silver chain, hung the key that fit the lock on Mr. Pratt’s desk: a key obtained at great effort, from a wax imprint of the original during one of Mrs. Keane’s rare inattentive moments. Every morning she had looped it over her head; every day it had dangled on her chest, beneath her neat starched uniform, waiting for the opportunity to strike. That opportunity hadn’t arrived, of course. She was always too busy, or the family too close by, or her body too enervated. Or an appointment upstairs with Harry too imminent.
But now. Now the family was busy trimming the Christmas tree in the drawing room, while the phonograph drowned out any untoward noises with its hollow rendition of “The Bottom of the Punchbowl.” Harry was trapped on a stepladder, doing his mother’s bidding. There was no question of anyone wandering into Mr. Pratt’s study, tonight of all nights.
She was familiar with the room now and needed no light to find her way to the massive desk. Her hands shook. She was doing this, actually doing this. She drew the key out from beneath her collar, and the metal warmed her skin. Where was the drawer? There it was, the lock solid beneath her fingertips. She guided the key inside, holding one hand with the other to keep it steady, moving quickly so she wouldn’t have time to think about it, wouldn’t have time to lose her nerve.