Prospero's Children Read Online Free Page B

her the dreary moan of the wind in the chimney. A grandfather clock ticked loudly, but there were no other sounds. At the far end of the room was an alcove, and peering out of it was the Face. For an instant, for all her resolute nerves, Fern stifled a gasp that was almost a cry. It was the face of a malevolent Buddha, not pensive and serene but gloating, somehow sly, the broad lips half parted in an unholy smile, the eyelids creased at some inscrutable jest, stubby horns protruding above a low brow. One of the lightbulbs flickered and she had the illusion that the idol had winked at her. It’s a statue, she told herself. Only a statue. Inadvertently, she spoke aloud.
    Will and Robin had been investigating other doors but her brother heard her and came back to the hall. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Did you call?”
    “It was the statue,” she said. “It gave me a shock.”
    Will pushed past her to take a closer look. “It’s hideous,” he said gleefully. “I’ll bet Great-Cousin Ned brought it back from his travels. Sailors always pick up stuff in foreign parts, don’t they? This place could be full of strange things. Some of them might be valuable.”
    “Pirates’ treasure, I suppose?” said Fern, reassured by his ebullience. “Doubloons, and pieces of eight.”
    “I thought a doubloon was something you wore.” Will had stopped a couple of feet in front of the idol, and suddenly he turned away. “Actually, I don’t think I do like it very much. I wonder what it’s laughing at?”
    “I don’t really want to know,” said Fern.
    Robin found the kitchen, at the back of the house. It was stone-flagged, cold but clean, with the barren air of a kitchen where nothing had been cooked in a long while. A jar of coffee, packets of sugar and tea, and a plate of sandwiches in plastic wrap stood on the table, looking like the isolated relics of an alien visitation. There was milk in the fridge. They had snacked at a pub on the way, but Will and Robin tucked into the sandwiches, one eagerly, the other absentmindedly. Fern searched for a teapot to make tea.
    “It’s a depressing sort of house, isn’t it?” Robin commented between mouthfuls.
    “That’s Yorkshire for you,” said his daughter.
    The building was on three storeys, with eight bedrooms but only one bathroom and an extra loo downstairs. “The Victorians,” Robin explained. “Grubby lot. Didn’t reckon too much to bathrooms.” The cistern slurped and gurgled at the slightest provocation; hot water was not forthcoming. They went to bed unwashed, like the Victorians. Mrs. Wicklow had made up the beds in three of the second-floor rooms; Robin chose the front room, Fern and Will slept at the back of the house. Fern lay awake for some time, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of a country night. The rain was silent and there was no traffic, although once she heard the grating roar of an untuned engine on the road below, possibly a motorbike. A strange mewing cry must, she assumed, have been some nocturnal creature, maybe a bird: it was only the unfamiliarity of it which disturbed her. She slept fitfully, falling between uneasy dreams, not sure if the snuffling she could hear, along the wall beneath her window, was real or simply another phantom from the shadows of sleep.
    In the morning she woke around nine and got up to look at her surroundings in daylight. There was a small garden at the back of the house but the flower-beds were scantily planted and the grass grew in tufts on what might have been intended for a lawn; only weeds and a few hardy shrubs thrived there. Beyond, the bare hillside, treeless and gray with dew, climbed up toward the moors and the sky. Occasional rocks broke the skin of turf, moss-padded, the outthrust bones of Earth; a bridle path skirted the garden and ascended the slope, a shadowy line against the contouring of the land. Above it Fern noticed something which might have been a solitary boulder or stump, curiously