but it seems in memory the natural sort of language I would have blundered with.
‘Are you mad?’ she replied.
‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say now.’
‘It’s alright. Go up and wait in my saloon with all those other gossips.’
We drank expensive China tea from expensive little dishes. Etta played the society hostess, which is what she was. We rustled and fanned. We ate the cakes. I sat daringly on the floor as did one or two other younger girls. More status-conscious older women squeezed themselves on to the various seat levels. Pet and the ladies’ maids had to stand at the sides.
‘Now,’ said Etta. She opened an interior door. Through it, after a brief pause, walked a young girl whose skin was like fine leather, whose black hair hung in huge braids, and whose clothing was stiff, like leather too, in the form of coat and trousers covered with beadwork wildlife. ‘I introduce to you – Pawnee,’ said Etta. ‘She is an Indian Queen from Virginia, or thereabouts.’
‘Good day, ladies,’ said Pawnee, in impeccable English. ‘I hope the time of year finds you all well.’
Etta aimed a whisper at me. ‘Are you surprised?’
I was surprised.
‘A gap!’ laughed Etta.
‘A gap indeed,’ I said.
At my uncle’s house I said to Pawnee and Etta: ‘Do you know how when you are grown up the weeks and years seem to pass more rapidly than they did when you were a child?’
We were sitting in the back room looking out of the double doors at the sun on the goose-pecked grass between the honeysuckles in the yard.
‘I know what that is;’ said Pawnee. “The world is speeding up.’
‘Of course it isn’t.’ Etta contracted her nostrils; it exaggerated the fineness of her noble nose for a moment. ‘Why should it?’
‘Why shouldn’t it?’
‘Well I hope it’s not, for my children’s sake.’
‘There. I was right,’ I said. ‘Rude but right. Sometimes when I know things I blurt them out. I can’t help it, it seems. But admit it, my dear.’
‘You are preoccupied,’ she replied. ‘Edmund is very skilful.’
‘What’s that? What is skilful?’ The other two both laughed.
Etta choked out: ‘Edmund is, Kit.’
And Pawnee added: ‘Let’s hope the world doesn’t speed up on him, then.’
‘My world is speeding up,’ I said. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Etta. My uncle’s fine bracket clock chimed the quarter.
“This is a prismatic sextant, Charles, in a new mode. I finished it last night. You’ll be impressed with the notion, I believe.’
‘Isaac, your ingenuity. It’s very fine.’
‘Take it. With my esteem. Oh, and make sure you show it to some-one when you call at the Admiralty. What a pity Cherry Russell’s no longer quite placed.’
‘Isaac. I’m overwhelmed.’
‘I’ll teach you to use it.’
‘You don’t subscribe to this Millennialist hysteria, then?’
‘It’s not according to my calculations,’ said my uncle seriously. ‘And if we are to adjust our calendar the false prophets will find themselves mightily confused.’ Charles laughed.
Round the fire in the back room on an evening when the red curtains were drawn and only a few candles were lit, I said to Pawnee: ‘I was once a boy. I was changed by my uncle into a girl.’
‘I was once a polecat,’ she said. ‘Were you ever anything else, Etta?’
Etta came back into the room, from which she’d been half out, putting on her mantle. ‘I must get home. Could you tell Tony I’m ready, Kit. Are you ready, Pawnee?’
‘It makes it difficult to know who you are,’ I said.
‘It’s not difficult for me,’ said Pawnee.
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘It’s very difficult for me.’
‘What do you mean, was I ever anything else? Tony!’ Etta leaned back out of the door and shouted up at the top flight. Tony!’
‘Etta was a bird,’ Pawnee said, thoughtfully. Her skirts rustled. She was dressed now in normal clothes; the native rig was just for the surprise. ‘A beautiful crow with dark shiny feathers. She flew high above the forest looking for babies and earrings, until there was a great fire, and the forest went away. Then she flew higher and higher. Edmund too was a crow. He found her in the tent of the sun; her wings were bleeding. Dark, dark blood. There were two drops. One was me and one was Kit.’
‘What’s so difficult for you, Kit?’ said Etta. ‘Are you talking about Charles Montagu?’
‘Everything,’ I said. ‘And my time is speeding up so much. So much.’
When they had gone I went in to join my uncle. He was occasionally drunk – ish. From the solitude of evenings when no one came.
‘What do you think of me, Catherine? Do you think I’m greatly changed?’
‘Greatly, Uncle.’
‘But not so greatly as you, eh, boy? I have maintained my gender.’
‘Have you, Uncle?’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘Mean?’ A pause, during which he took another glass of the brown fluid he had in front of him.
‘D’you know what it is I do? What I did today, for example.’
‘No, Uncle.’
‘I found a series of mistakes in the accounts submitted to me by Mr Blackwall, my Superintendent of Works. I took luncheon. I interviewed a Person of Quality who thought he was interviewing me. And I saw to it that a notorious coiner was committed to be hanged. Catherine!’
‘Yes, Uncle.’
‘Well, do you hear me, or not?’
‘I hear you, Uncle.’
‘And you say nothing?’
‘What would you have me say?’
