Prospero's Children Read Online Free Page A

they sort of faded away and then he came home and vegetated there too. Must have been about ninety when he died. The sisters were fairly ancient as well. Remember visiting once with my grandparents: I think I was about Will’s age. There were three or four of them left by then: Esme and Deirdre and Irene—don’t recall any other names. Esme—no, Eithne—they called her the baby. Seventy-five at least. Very small with a wrinkled little face all eyes, like a marmoset in flowered chiffon. ‘I made the seedcake myself,’ she told me. Frightful stuff. Tasted of sand.”
    “What’s seedcake?” asked Will, intrigued.
    “Told you,” said Robin. “Sand.”
    They arrived in Yorkshire around ten that evening. Fern, normally a faultless map-reader, was in an edgy mood after losing them twice. Although it was May the weather was cold and a thin drizzle misted the windscreen whenever Robin tried switching off the wipers. The lights of a straggling village glittered through the rain as they crossed the Yarrow and climbed uphill; few lights and far between, lurking behind deep-set windows and close-drawn curtains, not unwelcoming but distant, keeping themselves to themselves. Following directions conveyed by Ned Capel’s solicitors they left the village and continued on into the dark, turning off at last up a steep drive which proved to be more like a cart-track, their rough passage shaking the Audi until its Vorsprung seemed about to come unsprung. The drive widened and leveled out in front of the house and Robin stopped the car. Little of the façade was visible through the rain-swept gloom except for the tall windows, many of them arched, black in the gray wall. The former housekeeper, a local woman, had been informed of their advent but there were no lights showing, no indications that they were expected. The house might have stood unoccupied for years. It looked dour, unfriendly, desolate as the surrounding countryside, hugging itself around the hollow darkness of its dusty rooms. Fern produced a flashlight and the roving beam picked out the entrance, tag-ends of creeper casting wavering fingers of shadow across the front door. In the blurred lozenge of light this was seen to be of unvarnished oak, splintered and weather-bleached, and as solid as the door to a dungeon. A modern Yale lock had been added, but the key turned reluctantly and the door creaked open under duress, scraping over bare boards. The hall inside was chilly and almost pitch-black. Fern took a long time finding the lightswitch: the skittering beam glanced over the lower treads of a winding stair and flicked in and out of curious niches and past angled doorways, blinking back abruptly from the depths of a stained mirror. Low-wattage illumination did little to improve matters, showing the details of cobwebs trailing from ceiling and lamp-shade and patches of discoloration on walls which might originally have been painted white.
    Will gazed about him without enthusiasm. “Fern’s right,” he said. “What’s the point of a house we won’t use? I think we should sell.”
    “I must say,” Robin averred, “it looks a bit off-putting. Could move on, I suppose. Find a B & B. Come back in the morning.”
    “No.” Fern’s tone did not admit of argument. “We’re here and we’re going to stay. You were both so set on coming: well, I don’t intend to run away just because there isn’t a red carpet. Mrs. Wicklow was asked to leave us tea and milk and so on. Let’s find the kitchen.”
    She deposited the flashlight on a table and opened the door to her left, flicking an adjacent switch. A yellow glow sprang into being, no mellow radiance but a tired, sickly, off-color light, as if the bulbs which provided it were continuously on the verge of expiring. It illumined a long drawing room with a few pieces of cumbersome furniture, the velvet upholstery rubbed raw by past occupants, a carpet mottled with age and dirt, and a wide empty fireplace bringing to