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Now, with a lone candle to light the stairs in one hand and the carpet bag gripped firmly in the other, Matilda crept as though a stealthy thief. Nevertheless, her starched petticoats dragged on the wooden treads like leaves rustling beneath a broom, her light steps as those of a hulking gollumpus in the attentive dark.
Each night, Matilda had watched from the landing outside her chambers as the butler had locked up, and now, standing before the solemn front door, she rubbed the foul-smelling cloth upon the shrill second bolt.
Tossing the cloth aside, she gripped the barrel.
The mechanism slid, a scant whisper of metal as it glided back.
Even the silence sighed.
She gathered her bag, clasped the handle and pulled open the hefty door. The wood groaned and she stilled.
Naught roused but for a brush of warm air which caressed her cheek, strange and vivid.
Matilda knew not its cause, only that it felt as though her childhood home was declaring its farewell, that it wished her Godspeed for an unknown future.
A solitary thick tear streaked her cheek, but after thrusting the door wide, she sped into the sombre dawn.
And did not look back.
* * *
Sittingbeneath a sprouting willow tree with the faint glow of daybreak shimmering above the rooftops of Piccadilly ought to be quite the romantic scene.
But Matilda’s buttocks had numbed, and she was quite sure her feet had succumbed to frostbite.
At least she was safe though.
She had scurried along the deserted streets, head down and pace frantic. Never before had she been out of the house alone, especially at dawn, and her heart had knocked in her chest like a nest-building cuckoo in spring.
A few jug-bitten bucks had staggered along the way and a keen night watchman had watched – which she supposed was his job – but he’d eyed her with a lascivious gleam and licked his lips.
The door to Mr Hawkins’ home was located upon the rear of the property at the end of this tidy garden, with a spectral Green Park opposite, a nebulous fog drifting. Once a swampy burial ground for lepers, an air of sad expectancy gloated from within the park’s lush green lawns, and eerie tales of the ill-famed haunted tree at its heart, avoided by birds and people alike, had compelled her to hum to herself as she’d passed by.
As a rule, she was perfectly clear-minded in relation to such matters – ghosts and whatnot – yet she’d sworn a sinister figure in scarlet had stridden through the mist this dawn and so she’d darted through the gates of No. 25 as though the devil himself had been tugging at her skirts.
The high-up chimneys had eventually spluttered a pitch smoke, and a dim glow had flickered at the rim of the closed shutters; yet surely to hammer upon the door at such an hour would have been the height of rudeness.
Cousin Astwood’s butler refused to admit callers between the hours of midnight and nine, unless they were scantily dressed.
Needless to say, Matilda did not fit into that category, hence she remained in the cold upon this incommodious garden bench.
At what hour could a governess call upon her employer?
Matilda knew the exact hour for a lady to call upon friends in London, had read of when the Batok tribe took supper in East Africa and at what hour the Russians considered early enough for vodka. Yet conduct for this vocation was all so unknown.
What she did realise was that if she waited out here in the cold much longer, Mr Hawkins would not have a governess to house but a body to bury.
Surely he arose early to open his Boxing Academy? Or did he have staff for that?
With no small amount of prejudice before the interview, Matilda had thought he’d be an unpleasant character with hammy fists and lumbering steps, barely able to understand the King’s English – if indeed anyone could, since their liege had gone mad.
For research purposes only of course, she’d scrutinised drawings of prizefighters and mulled over match reports, barely grasping the detail – fancy coves, mufflers, plumpers and whiffles…
Incomprehensible.
Mr Hawkins, however, had been most well-spoken and mannerly. And last night, for no apparent reason that she could fathom, she had dreamed of those sizeable calloused knuckles…
She rubbed arms that had lost all feeling and contemplated what her first-ever student might be like.
