handkerchiefs and cheap jewellery – all of it went into a stack in the hallway (except the spider which Tabby did not allow to live). Maisie’s nose was itching from the dust, but the satisfaction of finally seeing the floor of the room – an Indian rug spread over bare polished boards – made up for any discomfort.
So she turned to the violently lurching cupboard and threw the doors open, started pulling everything out. The more she took out of it, the more it leaned to one side, as though the junk had been ballast. Finally, the whole thing tipped over. Tabby skittered away. Maisie crouched next to the cupboard, examining the legs. Perhaps she could knock them both off, or maybe she should just throw it out. It didn’t look like an expensive antique, unless there was something expensive and antique about chipboard.
As she stood up, she felt something move under her foot, nearly overbalancing her. She looked down, and noticed that one of the floorboards was loose. The one, in fact, that had somehow supported the crooked cupboard for all these years. She took a step back and crouched down again, feeling along the board to see if it was safe. It wasn’t. With a bit of weight on one end, the other end popped up. She picked up the free end and found that the whole board was not secured at all. Just as she was dropping it back into place, the light caught something glinting dully underneath between the floor and the stone. She put the board aside and peered into the dark. An iron box, almost black around the corners.
“My god, buried treasure,” she muttered, and she would have been lying if she had said she wasn’t expecting to find jewels, banknotes, Spanish doubloons. She pulled the box out and flipped up the clasp. Opened it with shaking, eager hands. No treasure. A tiny book. Or at least a section of a book. It had a hard front cover but looked like it had been torn apart. She flicked through it and saw that it was handwritten, but realised immediately it could not be her grandmother’s: the first page was headed with a date in 1793.
“A diary,” she breathed. An old, old diary, locked away in a rusty iron box under the floorboards. She couldn’t wait to tell Adrian. More importantly, she couldn’t wait to read it. She put the board back in place and shifted the fallen cupboard over it, so that she or Tabby wouldn’t accidentally fall through the floor, took the diary to the lounge room and turned the radio down. Outside, gusty rain was driving against the windows. She laid the book carefully aside while she made tea and stoked the fire, then settled in a lounge chair and prepared to decipher the centuriesold scrawl.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Saturday, 7 September 1793
And so, little book, prepare to become the custodian of all my News. For although I have a perfectly good diary, handsome and leather-bound, which Mme. Bombelles gave me some two years ago, You come from a far more precious, and certainly much more handsome source, than hideous Mme. Bombelles with her chin hair and rolling neck. Who, then, is this precious benefactor, little book? Why, none other than the most beautiful Man who ever did walk this earth in a human form: Mr. Marley, Mr. Virgil Marley, of Fenchurch-street. Not a salubrious Address, you understand, but one of which I am sure I could grow increasingly fond, given its dear inhabitant. He is tall and chestnut-haired, with warm brown eyes and skin like alabaster; but that does not describe the gentleness of his countenance, the slow, warm beat of his laughter, nor the swift intensity of his Mind. He has a little of what Papa would call “la maladie anglaise” or the English condition: that is, he is given to fits of melancholy, but mostly he is charming fun. His favourite jest is to make fun of my English, as though it were very ill, when he knows that it was my first language on account of my Mother being born right here on St James’s Square (and not in Lyon where we live
So she turned to the violently lurching cupboard and threw the doors open, started pulling everything out. The more she took out of it, the more it leaned to one side, as though the junk had been ballast. Finally, the whole thing tipped over. Tabby skittered away. Maisie crouched next to the cupboard, examining the legs. Perhaps she could knock them both off, or maybe she should just throw it out. It didn’t look like an expensive antique, unless there was something expensive and antique about chipboard.
As she stood up, she felt something move under her foot, nearly overbalancing her. She looked down, and noticed that one of the floorboards was loose. The one, in fact, that had somehow supported the crooked cupboard for all these years. She took a step back and crouched down again, feeling along the board to see if it was safe. It wasn’t. With a bit of weight on one end, the other end popped up. She picked up the free end and found that the whole board was not secured at all. Just as she was dropping it back into place, the light caught something glinting dully underneath between the floor and the stone. She put the board aside and peered into the dark. An iron box, almost black around the corners.
“My god, buried treasure,” she muttered, and she would have been lying if she had said she wasn’t expecting to find jewels, banknotes, Spanish doubloons. She pulled the box out and flipped up the clasp. Opened it with shaking, eager hands. No treasure. A tiny book. Or at least a section of a book. It had a hard front cover but looked like it had been torn apart. She flicked through it and saw that it was handwritten, but realised immediately it could not be her grandmother’s: the first page was headed with a date in 1793.
“A diary,” she breathed. An old, old diary, locked away in a rusty iron box under the floorboards. She couldn’t wait to tell Adrian. More importantly, she couldn’t wait to read it. She put the board back in place and shifted the fallen cupboard over it, so that she or Tabby wouldn’t accidentally fall through the floor, took the diary to the lounge room and turned the radio down. Outside, gusty rain was driving against the windows. She laid the book carefully aside while she made tea and stoked the fire, then settled in a lounge chair and prepared to decipher the centuriesold scrawl.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Saturday, 7 September 1793
And so, little book, prepare to become the custodian of all my News. For although I have a perfectly good diary, handsome and leather-bound, which Mme. Bombelles gave me some two years ago, You come from a far more precious, and certainly much more handsome source, than hideous Mme. Bombelles with her chin hair and rolling neck. Who, then, is this precious benefactor, little book? Why, none other than the most beautiful Man who ever did walk this earth in a human form: Mr. Marley, Mr. Virgil Marley, of Fenchurch-street. Not a salubrious Address, you understand, but one of which I am sure I could grow increasingly fond, given its dear inhabitant. He is tall and chestnut-haired, with warm brown eyes and skin like alabaster; but that does not describe the gentleness of his countenance, the slow, warm beat of his laughter, nor the swift intensity of his Mind. He has a little of what Papa would call “la maladie anglaise” or the English condition: that is, he is given to fits of melancholy, but mostly he is charming fun. His favourite jest is to make fun of my English, as though it were very ill, when he knows that it was my first language on account of my Mother being born right here on St James’s Square (and not in Lyon where we live
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