The Beautiful Child by Emma Tennant Page B

House, be aware of the guests who had thronged the great man’s drawing-room and show the garden, a particular favourite of James, who liked to look out of his window and see an English gardener at work. I had visited, as a prospective tenant, and my credentials had been good. I was a Professor of English at-University, after all and had produced, in the distinguished American periodical
Raritan,
an essay on James’s Anglophilia, but I’d had no intention of leaving my home town. In reality I simply wanted to view the house and be taken seriously while I was doing so.
    I will not dwell on the unpleasant effect on one’s nerves it can have to revisit a delightful location and find it fallen into – if this is not too fanciful an expression – evil hands. Lamb House, on that night when it became clear to me that the spirits which haunted it had taken control of the place entirely, restricting and dictating all movement, curtailing a freedom without which we can none of us breathe or function – Lamb House, on that night of the New Year Full Moon, was as sly, malignant and corrupt as its vile spirit inhabitants. No prayer or mantra could save the incoming traveller: to abandon hope was the only option available – and on doing so, I had little doubt, one would fall for ever into the grip of the cook and butler, the Quint and Jessel (as I now saw) who had terrorized the children in James’s masterpiece
The Turn of the Screw.
They had continued, after becoming a part of their master’s removal to the country, to exercise their dreadful talents in the house at Rye; and our little party in the Edwardian house down the road – devoted as it was to the study and (faintly ridiculous) worship of James simplified for a television arts programme – was a prime target for them. We were a danger to the ghostly couple, as they prowled the house and its environs for new victims. Children, innocent and unaware, would never grow up here – there must be dozens of Mileses and Floras who had not gone beyond seven or ten years of age.
    The moon was casting a bluish light into the empty bedrooms as I stumbled down the first-floor passage and, thinking myself courageous indeed, flung open their doors. I was conscious, in a way I had never known before, of a vast exhaustion as it crept over me, bringing with it a deep cold that penetrated as far as the bone. Why the place was unfurnished, I could not even speculate – for it was impossible to know, as with so many ‘historic’ homes in England, which era we were in. Even to think of poor Salome transformed to a drudge was unbearable to me then.
    At last I reached the final bedroom in the passage – it opened out on to the principal landing of the house and would boast a fine view of the garden and the hills beyond had not the snow turned to sleet, eddying like a giant white brush, obscuring all details of either; and I turned the handle and looked in. There must be some exhibition, I thought, to do with Henry James and his artefacts, for this room at least had been prepared carefully – or artfully, perhaps, in expectation of a paying visitor. A four-poster bed was made up, with linen sheets and large plumped pillows; a mahogany cupboard stood open, displaying a selection of tweed jackets, knickerbockers and the like; and a small table by the side of the bed was laid out, perhaps in readiness for a writer’s thoughts before breakfast, with pen, a blotter and a leather paper-holder with discreetly engraved address inscribed on each letter.
    My exhaustion turned to gratitude. Someone somewhere knew I needed comfort – and, beyond that, compliments on my intimate knowledge of the work of the Master were clearly in evidence. A glass of fresh orange juice on the small painted commode on the far side of the bed showed consideration for my recent hideous experiences. Breakfast would be brought as soon as it was light, I had no