Turn of the Screw / Beginner 2 (2)

'What did he look like?' she asked.

'He is like nobody!'

'What do you mean?'

'He has no hat!' She looked worried, so I continued quickly, 'He has red hair, and a long face, with strange eyes.'

Mrs Grose's mouth was open, and she stared at me. 'Is he handsome? How is he dressed?'

'Oh, yes, he's handsome. And he's wearing another person's clothes.'

'The master's!' she said.

'You know this man?'

She did not reply for a second, then she answered, 'Quint. Peter Quint. He was the master's servant. He took some of his clothes - but never his hat. When the master left, Quint looked after everything in the house. He was only a servant, but he gave the orders.'

'Then where did he go?'

'Go?' she said. 'Oh no, he died.'

'Died?' I almost screamed.

'Yes,' she said. 'Peter Quint is dead.'

CHAPTER FOUR

Mrs Grose and I talked a lot about Quint's ghost.

'I have never seen anything,' she said. But she knew my story was true. 'Who was he looking for?' she asked me.

'He was looking for little Miles,' I said, because suddenly I knew that it was true.

Mrs Grose looked frightened. 'The child?' she asked.

'His ghost wants to find the children.'

'How do you know?'

'I know, I know! And you know too, don't you?' She did not answer, so I continued, 'Miles never speaks about Quint. Isn't that strange? He says nothing to me. "They were great friends, Miles and Quint," you told me.'

'It was Quint's idea,' Mrs Grose said. 'He wanted to play with Miles all the time. He was too free with him.'

'Too free!' He was too free with my boy! - this was terrible.

'He was too free with everyone.'

'So he was truly a bad man?'

'I knew it, but the master didn't. He didn't like to hear about any sort of trouble. I couldn't tell him. I was afraid.'

'What were you afraid of?'

'Quint was so clever - he could do terrible things.'

'A dreadful man, with those innocent little children - couldn't you do something?'

'I couldn't say anything. Peter Quint gave the orders.' She began to cry.

Did Mrs Grose tell me everything? No - there was something that she didn't say. I had to be brave. I had to watch carefully. The children must not meet this ghost!

And then, one afternoon, I took Flora out into the garden. Miles was reading inside, so Flora and I walked down to the lake together. It was hot, and we walked under the trees for much of the time. When we arrived at the lake, I sat down with a book, and for an hour everything was quiet. Suddenly I thought, 'Someone is watching us.' But I did not look up at once. I looked at Flora first. She had stopped playing and was very still. 'She can see the person too!' I thought. Then she turned away quickly from the lake.

Now I had to look up. A woman was standing on the other side of the lake - a dreadful woman, dressed in black. She was staring at Flora. I knew that she was the ghost of Miss Jessel, the children's old governess.

'Flora saw her too!' I told Mrs Grose later.

'Did she tell you?' Mrs Grose asked.

'No - and that makes it more terrible! The woman has come for Flora. The way she looks at her-'

Mrs Grose turned white. 'She was dressed in black?'

'Yes, and she was handsome. She was a beautiful woman, but a bad one.'

'They were both bad,' she said at last.

'You must tell me about them now,' I said.

'They were - together,' she said. 'They were lovers. But she paid a terrible price for it. Yes, she suffered, poor woman! He did what he wanted.'

'With her?'

'With them all.'

'How did she die?'

'I don't know. I didn't want to know. But she couldn't stay in the house after that. She had to leave. She was a lady, and he was only a servant.'

'And Peter Quint? How did he die?'

'He drank too much one night. He came out of the bar in the village and fell down on the ice. He cut his head on a stone. Well, that's what people say. Nobody really knows.'

'It's all so terrible!' And now I began to cry, and Mrs Grose took me in her arms. 'We can't save the children! They're lost! Lost!'

But I still wanted to be with the children most of all, specially with Flora. She looked into my face carefully with her big, blue eyes, and said, 'You were crying.' She was so sweet, so innocent - how could she know about these dreadful things?

'And Miles?' I asked Mrs Grose about Miles. '"He was sometimes bad," you said to me. How was he bad?'

'Naughty,' she replied. 'I said naughty, not bad.'

'Please tell me!' I continued. 'He's always so good with me. So when he was bad - or naughty - it was unusual. What happened?' We were talking late into the night, and now the grey light of morning was coming. Mrs Grose was silent for a minute, then she answered me.

'Quint and the boy were together all the time. I didn't like it. I spoke to Miss Jessel about it. She was angry with me. "It's none of your business," she said. So I spoke to Miles.'

'You told him that Peter Quint was only a servant?'

'Yes. "You're only a servant too," he answered me. And there were times when he and Peter Quint were together for hours, but he said, "I haven't seen Peter today."'

'He lied to you?'

Mrs Grose seemed surprised by this word. 'Yes - perhaps he did.'

'And he knew about Quint, and Miss Jessel?'

'I don't know - I don't know!'

'Yes, you do know! And we need to know more!'

CHAPTER FIVE

I waited and watched carefully for some days. The children were so lovable and happy that I nearly forgot my worries sometimes. They enjoyed studying, and were clever and funny in our lessons together. Sometimes they seemed to have a plan: one of them talked to me, while the other disappeared outside. But this did not really worry me.

Then, one evening, I stayed up very late in my bedroom. I was reading a book by the light of a candle. Flora was asleep in her little bed in the corner. Suddenly, I looked up and listened. Something was moving in the house. I remembered my first night, when I heard sounds like this.

I took my candle and left the room. I locked the door behind me, and walked to the top of the stairs. My candle went out, but I noticed that it was already quite light, and I could see without it. I realised that there was someone on the stairs below. It was Peter Quint again. There was a big window by the stairs, he stood by it and stared up at me. I knew then that he was both wicked and dangerous. But I was not afraid. We stood and stared silently, and that was the strangest thing. A murderer can talk, but a ghost cannot. Then he turned, and disappeared at the bottom of the stairs.

I returned to my room. A candle was still burning there, and I saw that Flora's bed was empty. I ran to her bed, frightened. Then I heard a sound. She was hiding by the window. She looked very serious.

'You naughty person! Where did you go?'

I sat down, and she climbed onto my knee.

'Were you looking for me out of the window?' I asked her. 'Did you think I was in the garden?'

'Well, someone was out there,' she said, and smiled at me. Her face was innocent and beautiful in the candlelight.

'And did you see anybody?'

'Oh, no!'

I knew that she was lying. But I did not say anything.

Each night now I sat up late. Sometimes I went out of my room to look, and listen. Once I saw a woman on the stairs. She sat there in sadness, with her head in her hands. She did not show me her face, but I knew that it was dreadful and that she was suffering. I only saw her for a second, and then she disappeared.

After eleven nights, I could not stay awake late, and I went to sleep quite early. I woke up at about one o'clock in the morning. Flora was standing by the window, staring out. She did not notice me. There was a full moon, and I could see her face in its light. She was giving herself to something out there, to the ghost that we saw by the lake. I got up - I wanted to find another room with windows that looked out onto the garden.

The room in the tower was the best one. It was a big, cold bedroom, nobody ever slept there. I put my face against the glass of the window. The garden was very bright in the moonlight. Somebody was standing on the grass and staring up above me - at the tower. So there was another person out there, on the roof of the tower. But the person in the garden was not the ghost of the woman. It was little Miles.

When I went down into the garden, Miles came in quietly with me, back to his bedroom.

'Tell me now, Miles,' I said. 'Why did you go out? What were you doing in the garden?'

'Will you understand?' he asked me, with his wonderful smile. I felt almost sick while I waited to hear. He planned to tell me everything!

'Well,' he said. 'I wanted to be bad!' He kissed me. 'I didn't go to bed! I went out at midnight! When I'm bad, I'm really bad!' He spoke like a naughty, happy child. 'I planned it with Flora.'

'She stood at the window-'

'To wake you up!'

'And you stood outside in the cold. Well, you must go to bed now.' I was the governess again, and Miles was just a naughty boy. He was too clever for me.

I told Mrs Grose everything. 'We think that the children are good, but they're not. They live with them - not with us. They want to be with Quint and that woman!'

'But why?' Mrs Grose asked.

'Because Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are wicked, and they taught Flora and Miles to love wickedness. They're bad!'

'Yes, they were a wicked pair,' Mrs Grose said. 'But what can they do now? They're dead.'

'They're still here! Their ghosts are looking for our children. They can still take Miles and Flora from us!'

'Oh, my goodness!'

'They wait in high, strange or dangerous places - the roof of the tower, the other side of the lake. It's dangerous but exciting, for Flora and Miles. They'll try to get to those wicked people.'

'And a terrible accident can happen - I see,' said Mrs Grose. 'We must stop this. Their uncle must take them away from here. I can't write, so you must write to him.'

'What can I say? How will he know that it's true?' ('My employer will be angry with me,' I thought. 'I wanted so much to be brave and to help him.')

Mrs Grose took my arm. 'He must come!' she said. 'He must come back and help us!'

CHAPTER SIX

The summer changed into the autumn. I didn't see any more ghosts, and I did nothing. The sky was grey, and dead leaves blew onto the grass. Did the children see things? Sometimes everything suddenly went quiet in the schoolroom. I think that wicked pair were with us then. I think, too, that the children could see them. But usually, they were happy and worked hard. They were very interested in their uncle.

'Will he come soon?' they asked me. They wrote beautiful letters to him.