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“I liked it.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask me to go into great detail. My grandmother almost wrote my essay on it. “It was a bit difficult to understand in parts.”
“She had a difficult time with the vernacular,” my grandmother added in a gentle tone.
Cary gave an understanding nod. “Dialogue in those nineteenth-century stories can be rather challenging to navigate. Dickens, Hardy’s younger contemporary, also had an endless cast of characters speaking in their local tongue.”
“I think I prefer happy endings. I hated what happened to her.”
Cary wore a sympathetic smile. “Quite. Back then, books were not intended to evoke comfort for the reader but to shed light on human struggles.”
“She was raped,” I said.
“Tragic. I know.” His mouth twitched into a sad smile. “I can think of several books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that portray the difficult plight of women—Clarissa, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina. Just a few that come to mind.”
“I’ve seen those on my reading list, but I’d like something that leaves me with a smile when I finish.”
“Then you’ll have to read Jane Eyre. That ends well. Or Pride and Prejudice. Not Wuthering Heights though.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” my grandmother said. “Heathcliff ends up with Cathy in the end. Their spirits meet on the moors.”
Instead of falling into a literature rabbit hole, I wanted to talk about my party, but it was nice to have them show an interest in me.
“Manon did well with an essay on a Shakespeare monologue.”
“Oh.” Cary’s face lit up. That was his world, after all, in the same way as eyeshadow and clothes were mine.
“She scored a distinction for Juliet’s famous soliloquy.”
“Really? Which one?”
She looked at me, and I bit my lip.
“As I recall, it was Act Three,” she said.
Cary was clearly enjoying himself. “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds…”
He even recited it with a girlish voice, and I had to giggle. “That’s the one. Wow. I’m impressed. Do you know it all?”
He nodded. “I played Mercutio back at college, during my fifteen seconds of fame treading the boards.”
“Mercutio’s part goes longer than that,” my grandmother said before turning her attention back to me. “Did you start on Virginia Woolf?”
“I’ve started on Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
“Oh, that ends well.” Cary looked chuffed, like it was him having to read the book.
Still, it motivated me to sit by the duck pond with the musty, yellowing-paged copy I’d found at Merivale’s library.
“I like a plot.”
He nodded, holding his chin. “Then try Somerset Maugham. He’s a giant. Of Human Bondage. A splendid book.”
“It’s not BDSM, is it? I liked Fifty Shades but not the whipping parts.” I’d only ever seen the movie, but I wasn’t about to admit that.
He looked at my grandmother and smiled. “Nothing like it. And now that I think about it, that book’s rather depressing. But a brilliant, life-changing read for me, at least.”
On that bookish note, I left them, thinking that if I wanted to develop my brain, Merivale was the place to be.
A text arrived from Drake. “Hey, there was nothing going on there. Did you want to see me about something?”
