Islands of the Gulf Volume 2, the Treasure

By Audrey Driscoll

Plot Summary: Abandoned and abused, young Herbert West resorts to drastic measures to survive. At Miskatonic University, he becomes a scientist who commits crimes and creates monstrosities. Decades later, haunted by his past, he finds safety as Dr. Francis Dexter of Bellefleur Island, but his divided nature threatens those he loves and forces him to face the truth about his healing powers.

More Details: Seeking relief from grief and illness in the refuge of Bellefleur Island, Francis Dexter relives in memory his early years when his name was Herbert West. To survive his mother’s disappearance, the capricious attentions of his father and the brutalities of his brothers, young Herbert makes himself into a juvenile strategist and warrior of vengeance.

Turning to science as a solace for emotional turmoil, Herbert studies medicine at Miskatonic University in Arkham. As both student and physician, he pursues forbidden experiments with single-minded determination, seeking to discover the secrets of life and death. The Great War presents West with a great opportunity, but in that maelstrom of violence he crosses the frontier of rationalism into the territory of the bizarre.

Recoiling from these poisoned memories, Francis Dexter turns to his years on Bellefleur Island and relives his tumultuous relationship with the artist Julian Vernon. For the first time since his troubled childhood, he allows himself to become emotionally attached to another human being, but the idyll is eroded by depression, drugs and jealousy and Dexter’s choices result in tragedy.

Saved and supported by Margaret Bellgarde, Dexter allows himself to be drawn into her family to recover from illness and sorrow. Until a day in July when his past confronts him and forces him to face the truth about his role as physician and healer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Audrey Driscoll
• Release date: May 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9780986636929

Audrey Driscoll

Three quarters of the way through a career as a cataloguing librarian, Audrey Driscoll discovered she is actually a writer. Since the turn of the millennium, she has written and published several novels and a short story collection. She gardens, juggles words, and communes with fictitious characters in Victoria, British Columbia.

Book preview

Book 3 of the Herbert West Series

ISLANDS OF THE GULF

VOLUME 2, THE TREASURE

by

Audrey Driscoll

Published by Audrey Driscoll at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 by Audrey Driscoll

ISBN 978-0-9866369-2-9 (EPUB version)

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

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Cover art by Damonza.com

Contents

Part 1:Herbert West

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Interlude: Margaret Bellgarde

Part 2: Francis Dexter

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Finale: Margaret Bellgarde

About the Author

Other Books in the Herbert West Series

She Who Comes Forth: a sequel to the Herbert West Series

Preview of Book 4: Hunting the Phoenix

Islands of the Gulf

Volume 2, The Treasure

Part 1

Herbert West

What we want, we may make about us; and what we don’t want, we may sweep away.

H.P. Lovecraft, He

Chapter 1

In my father’s house there were many closed doors and not a few that were always locked. I learned early in life the value of keys and locks, and the uses of deception.

I speak here of Hiram West, who I thought was my father until I learned otherwise, at the age of thirty-three. Such as he was, he is the only father I have known, so I continue to call him that, for the sake of simplicity.

I haven’t valued remembering and reminiscing, until now. Especially not in my first life, when all my efforts were concentrated on shaping my future. But now I am a convalescent without responsibilities. On these languid afternoons between luncheon and tea, I lie on a sofa, ministered to by Margaret and the amiable Betty, and I remember. It is astonishing, this eruption of memories, as though I have only now found something that has been mine all along.

My childhood was divided into two parts. No, that’s wrong. My childhood was rather brief. It ended when I was nine years old. That’s when I became my own man.

When I was a child, I belonged to my mother, the last of her three sons. Perhaps she doted on each of us in turn when we were small. I must have displaced my next oldest brother, Jeremy, as her favourite when he was barely five, kindling in him an intense jealousy.

In a sense, my mother’s whole life was a kind of dare, a tease, a deliberate risk. She escaped from her father’s tradition-bound family by marrying Hiram West. Even then he was a man of large ambitions, although he was only an undertaker. But the ‘quiet trade’ is quiet only on the surface. Hiram drove other undertakers out of business, not always in legal ways, striving not only for success but for supremacy. He soon left undertaking behind, but until the end of his life he was known in certain circles as Hiram the Undertaker.

When I was five, we moved from the wrong side of Beacon Hill to the Back Bay mansion that was the pride of Hiram’s acquisitive heart. He claimed he got it as the result of a bet, but that sounds like a typical Hiram West exaggeration. I think the man who owned the place happened to wind up on the wrong end of a business deal with Hiram the Undertaker, and thought the loss of his house preferable to intimidation, threats, arson, even murder.

It was a large house, comfortable and not excessively vulgar in its decorations. The size of the rooms helped to absorb the ornateness of the fixtures, the plaster curlicues, the pier glasses, the elaborate cornices and whorls of dark wood. Within this edifice each of us staked out a territory. My brothers had half of the third floor to themselves (with a maid dedicated to keeping their premises in order). I was forbidden on pain of death to enter their domain uninvited.

My domain was the garden, specifically one large oak tree perfect for climbing. I spent entire summer days among its branches, rigging up a network of ropes that provided the thrill of pretending to be a trapeze artist.

My father had a study and library on the ground floor, but these were small theatres, in which he performed the roles of Mr. West the businessman, Mr. West the solid citizen and, exclusively for us boys, Hiram the Patriarch.

But the real Hiram West, who was an amalgam of the captain of a privateer, a merchant prince and a circus ringmaster, held court in the Gun Room. This was not Hiram’s idea; the antique guns came with the house. My father was no stranger to guns, but regarded them as tools, not ornaments. For him, the appeal of the Gun Room was its comfort and self-contained seclusion. He even slept there sometimes, when for reasons mysterious to me he was excluded, or chose to exclude himself, from my mother’s rooms. Often, he would come into the house, followed by two or three or half a dozen cronies, and shout for Finch, the butler, to bring drinks and a meal to the Gun Room, pronto. They would closet themselves in there for hours. Listening at the door, I would hear rumbles of conversation, punctuated by outbursts of laughter. Or low-pitched talk and no laughter, with eruptions of argument.

Once, I was caught in my eavesdropping by a crony, who reported it to my father. Later that night he came to my bedroom, shook me awake and made me sit up. I don’t like little creeps who sneak around and listen at keyholes. If you get caught again, you’ll wish you’d never been born. Then he left. No fatherly words of wisdom, no advice to temper an inquiring mind with the virtue of circumspection. Only a threat, as though his seven year old son was a business rival who had overstepped the bounds. It was several weeks before I dared to listen at the door again, not for the things I overheard – unfamiliar names and incomprehensible plans – but for the thrill of the risk. Resolving not to be caught twice, I was ready to run at all times.

The only other piece of fatherly advice I remember from those early years, reinforced several times as I grew older, was on the usefulness of lying. My brothers, roughhousing in the front parlour, managed to break some ornament. They were discovered by our father, who happened to be nearby and heard the crash and ominous silence that followed. Both declared I had done it. Already an expert at selecting the less painful of two painful choices, I readily admitted to the deed. After a thrashing which seemed rather perfunctory, my father took me by the ear and said, Why didn’t you try to shift the blame onto Hiram Junior or Jeremy, instead of ‘fessing up right away? I sure hope you aren’t going to grow up to be a little pushover, Herbert. A fellow has to learn to think fast if he wants to get out of tight spots. Tell them just enough to make them wonder. Then while they’re wondering, you give ‘em the slip. Remember that.

My mother’s suite of rooms was on the second floor, at the opposite end of the house from the Gun Room and equally distant in atmosphere and décor. Everything was orderly there. The curtains hung straight, the cushions were plump, the pretty ornaments on their little tables were disposed just so. Sometimes she played her piano for me; or while she embroidered, looked at books of fashion or entertained other ladies with cups of tea and ‘dainties,’ I amused myself with my picture books and toy soldiers. When I tired of them, with my mother’s permission I took her figurines of crystal and porcelain carefully into my hands, using them as actors in little dramas. I had once asked my mother for dolls, but after her refusal to provide them on the grounds that boys did not play with such toys, I contented myself with her figurines instead. Before I left her rooms, I always returned them to their places.

Then there was her ‘little room,’ a place occupied by a chaise longue piled with cushions and draped with shawls, its single window heavily curtained. When my mother went into this room, the only people who were admitted were her personal maid and her doctor, and on a few occasions of rare privilege, I. But I was glad they were infrequent, for she was invariably strange then – distant and sleepy, as though she was about to go on a journey of sleep and wanted to make sure I’d be all right while she was away. Once or twice when I wanted to see her while she was shut away inside her little room, her maid Fanny told me in a harsh whisper that Miss Anna was having one of her headaches and I would have to come back tomorrow. You don’t want to make her suffer more than she has to already, do you, Master Herbert? she asked, and what answer could I give to that, besides No.

I liked it best was when it was just the two of us, and instead of talking to me about things I didn’t really understand, she sang little songs, Italian songs her own mother had taught her. I thought they were in a secret language only she and I understood. At those times, I was her caro Francesco, and happy. But on bad days, she was agitated and talked endlessly about Him – why did He ignore her? Why did He spend all his time with his friends? Who were those other women she’d heard about? I knew He was my father, but try as I might, I couldn’t puzzle out the meanings of the things she told me, not enough to help her and make her happy again.

I do not think I shall ever understand their relationship. Their dealings with one another were like a game with secret rules. Sometimes I knew my father was an enemy; on other occasions he seemed only an amiable buffoon. Once I tried to ask my mother about sounds I had heard through their bedroom door, sounds of violence and distress, excitement and agitation. I wanted to express my fear for her, my ignorant desire to be her champion, but I did not have the words. To my surprise, she cut me short. You shouldn’t listen at keyholes, Herbert, she said, unknowingly echoing my father. And why weren’t you in bed? I’ll have to speak to your governess about this. The blush that spread over her face and neck while she spoke puzzled me even more than I was already.

I think now that even toward the end there was more than indifference between them. Love? I have never claimed to understand love, even when I have (I think) experienced it myself. Of all emotions it is the least rational, the least subject to analysis, so I shall not even guess.

I am little more confident when it comes to speculating about my mother’s mental soundness. She spent nearly half of her life in institutions for the insane. I have reason to believe her initial incarceration was an act of gross injustice on my father’s part. Years of exposure to the other inmates and the barbaric ‘treatments’ to which she must have been subjected would have broken a stronger mind than hers. And I do not believe hers was a very robust constitution, psychologically. What little I have seen of the Derby family makes me suspect a hereditary melancholy. In her, it alternated with fits of irrational exaltation and triumphalism, in whose grip she was compelled to find an enemy to vanquish. More often than not, that enemy was Hiram. Never a patient man, and absolutely devoid of empathy, he finally took the step of confinement, justifying it by her apparently irrational act of running away to New York City, abandoning her devoted husband and three young sons.

But these unhappy things came later. Before that, with the exception of the times when she hid herself away in her boudoir, my mother was my dearest friend and I her best-beloved. Which is why, when she left for good without a word, I found myself alone and friendless.

Everything changed the year I turned eight. My mother went out more; there were fewer parties and more frequent arguments. Unlike the masculine arguments I heard through the Gun Room door, which were interesting, these were earthquakes which shook the foundations of my little world. Once, I asked my brothers about them. I went upstairs to their rooms and interrupted their game of backgammon.

They’re yelling at each other again, I said. Why do they do that?

Hiram Junior, the oldest, looked at me seriously and said, I guess they’re mad at each other. Father doesn’t like it when Mother goes to those meetings. You know that.

Jeremy scowled. Nah, it’s not that. Pa’s mad at her because of the little snot. That’s what it is.

The little snot. That’s what Jeremy called me. Until I was fifteen and he nearly twenty, I don’t remember him saying a civil word to me. He regarded me as an interloper, which I suppose I was, although I couldn’t help that, after all. He was always paying court to our mother, bringing her gifts and trying to get her attention, hating it when she showed me affection and bad-mouthing me every chance he got. The difference in our looks seemed especially to irk him. He and Hiram Junior took after our father – solid, brown-haired, brown-eyed. But I looked like our mother, with my wispy blond hair that for some reason she preferred to keep longer than it should have been for a boy of my age. We were both small, too – she not quite five feet tall, and I fortunate eventually to reach five and a half feet. To the casual observer there was a strong resemblance between us. Except our eyes. Hers were undoubtedly blue, while mine are grey – my true father’s eyes, though of course I did not know that at the time.

The worst of their fights happened one night in the summer. It was hot and I couldn’t sleep. The moon came into my window so brightly I feared it would burn me, so I got up and went to my mother’s door. I was about to open it and call out to her, when I heard my father’s voice, loud and unrestrained, like the baying of a dog.

I tell you, Anna, you’ve been falling down on the job for months now, and you’d better shape up. No more going to meetings with that lunatic Dexter and his worshippers. Or you can leave, if that’s what you want. But if you go, it’s for good.

I don’t know what she said to him. She spoke too quietly. But he didn’t. I heard every word of his response.

Do that and you’re a dead woman, Anna. Or as good as dead. Just remember that, and everything will be fine.

Hearing his heavy footsteps coming toward me, I ran and didn’t stop until I was back in my bedroom, huddled under the blankets, no longer hot but shivering with cold. It was a long time before I got to sleep and my dreams were full of terrors – my father’s face, coming at me like a runaway moon, mouth opening and closing, full of teeth and malice.

A short time after this, my father took all three of us boys to the racetrack for the day. We weren’t simply spectators; Hiram had business there and wanted to show us around. We saw the stables and the exercise yards, met trainers, jockeys and general hangers-on. I was impressed by the horses, but even more by the jockeys, who were little fellows like me, but sure of themselves.

We finished up in a plushly furnished office with drinks for everyone except Jeremy and me, much to his chagrin. The men settled down to talk in a way that reminded me of the things I overheard outside the Gun Room. I was a little sleepy and would have nodded off if I hadn’t been nervous of what Jeremy might do to me. After what seemed like a long time we went to a dining room, where lunch was served, followed by more drinks, more talk, more cigars. Then, finally, there were the horse races. The first few held my attention; after that I occupied myself by trying to make sense of the talk I’d heard, about odds, and different kinds of bets and payments, and something sinister called a ‘dead heat.’

By the time we got home, I had had enough of my father’s world. My mother, I thought, would be resting in her rooms, as she usually did in the late afternoon. I wanted to tell her about the new things I had seen and heard, but even more I wanted simply to be with her.

She wasn’t there. Her rooms were peaceful as always, everything in its place, except in her bedroom, one drawer of the dresser was a little open, a blue silk scarf trailing from it. I stood and looked at it, as the light through the window grew golden with the ending of the day. Hearing steps behind me, I turned around, relieved, expecting to see her. But it was only Fanny, flustered and annoyed. Oh it’s you, Master Herbert.

Where’s Mother? I asked.

She had to go away. I don’t know any more about it. You’d best ask your father.

I did not want to ask him, but when she hadn’t returned by lamplighting time I couldn’t think what else to do. He was in his office and looked up impatiently when I came over to his desk. Father, has Mother gone away? I asked. When is she coming back?

He didn’t answer but stared straight in front of him for a moment. Then he said, It seems she has. And I guess she’ll be back when she’s ready to come back. It depends.

Depends on what? I persisted. What does it depend on?

Things you wouldn’t understand. Go away now, I’m busy.

I nearly went, but he hadn’t reassured me. Halfway to the door, I turned around. Are you sure she’ll be back?

I’m sure, he said, not looking up. Even now, after everything that has passed since then, there are moments when I still hate him for that lie.

Of course she never came back. I did not know what had happened to her, and did not see her again for twenty-five years, by which time it was too late.

I managed to get through the days somehow. At first there were perfunctory lessons with my governess, but I had already outgrown them and could have taught her as well as she taught me. Her authority over me had been an extension of my mother’s. With her gone, I had no more reason to obey. My father realized this and dismissed the woman. We’ll have to arrange something else for you, he said. But it can wait a few months, until the new year.

At loose ends, I hung around my mother’s rooms, looking at her pretty things and rearranging them. I had an idea that if I got everything just right, she would know it and come back. Then my father fired Fanny and the rooms were shut and locked.

I tried to conjure my mother’s return by different means, such as running up the wide main stairs as fast as I could and sliding down the banister with my eyes closed. A successful landing counted, an untidy (and painful) one meant I had to start all over again. Ten good landings in a row would make the requisite magic, I told myself, but all I had to show for my efforts was a rainbow of bruises.

The worst time of the day was the late afternoon. Somehow, I always ended up on the window seat in an upper landing that overlooked the street. Until it got dark, and even after as the days shortened, I kept my post there, full of a failing hope that by watching I could bring her home. At the sight of a carriage slowing as it approached, my heart pounded and my breath caught in my throat, but all too soon it passed by, leaving me crumpled on the window seat, sobbing into the cushions.

Bored and disconsolate, I drifted down to the kitchen, a place where there was a certain amount of order and always something going on. Delivery men came and went. Meals were prepared at regular intervals. It was interesting to see the raw materials – pimply-skinned fowls, cuts of bloody meat and dirty vegetables – transformed into the dishes served with formality in the dining room. And of course there was the talk and gossip of the staff, some of whom spoke Italian to one another. Simply hearing the sound of my mother’s language brought me a little comfort.

Our cook at the time was Mrs. Petrucci. She was from northern Italy and looked German, with fair hair and blue eyes. She had an ironic manner and I suspect she thought our household wasn’t really up to her standards. But she cooked well enough to suit Hiram and he paid her enough to suit her, so she stayed.

At first she told me to keep out of the way and ignored me. One day, though, she asked me to take some potato peels to the slop bucket. When I brought back the empty bowl she seemed to notice me for the first time. Your daddy’s forgotten all about you, hasn’t he? she said. It wasn’t really a question, so I didn’t answer. Well, if you’re going to spend your time here, you might as well do something.

I think it tickled her fancy to have her employer’s son doing menial tasks in the kitchen. But after a few weeks she started to value me for my own sake. I learned quickly and didn’t ask unnecessary questions, taking to tasks such as chopping vegetables and boning fowl. Eventually, I became a good cook, something I have never regretted.

I began haunting the Gun Room door again too, hoping to hear something about my mother. Most of the time I was disappointed, but once I heard Hiram ask, And what about the woman? Still in Bellevue?

Another voice replied. No, she’s been moved. She’s in… Unfortunately, the speaker must have turned away from me then, or taken a drink, or was speaking around a cigar, because his next words were indistinct. …couldn’t be better, perfectly safe, was all I heard.

Then Hiram again. Sounds good. Okay, that’s it for now. I heard him get up and approach the door, so I wasted no time in making myself scarce.

Had they been speaking of my mother? Should I be happy that she was ‘perfectly safe?’ But where was Bellevue, and why hadn’t she at least written to me? I listened again and again, but heard nothing else about her.

When November came, I was determined to have my birthday party as usual. In past years, my mother had organized these celebrations, inviting a selection of children from families known to her and providing a luncheon, games and a cake. I had enjoyed being the centre of attention, and (amusingly, I think now) even at that early age had a sense of ‘occasion’ and the duties of a host.

I ordered Mrs. Petrucci to prepare the usual feast for the day, which was November 7. I would be nine years old, so I specified nine candles for the cake. Mrs. Petrucci looked at me for a moment and said, And has someone invited the other children? Mr. West, maybe he did it?

I was annoyed at myself for having forgotten this important detail and angry at my mother for failing in her responsibilities toward me. I had no idea how to issue invitations. Did she write to the children’s mothers? Did she telephone them? Of course, all those niceties were by the way. The only guest whose arrival really mattered to me was she, which was why it was unthinkable to put the matter into my father’s hands.

In the end, I suppose Mrs. Petrucci took pity on me and did what she could, preparing the right sort of meal, including a cake with the prescribed nine candles. The guests, however, were not children from Back Bay or Beacon Hill families, but her own grandchildren and their cousins. And the festivities took place in the kitchen, not in the dining room and parlour above. She could not, after all, risk her job to some mishap perpetrated by her young relatives, and must have reasoned that being no stranger to the kitchen, I would be just as happy there. I had the sense to recognize that a kindness was being done to me, and tried to be appreciative, but it was an uphill task. I had been trying to make magic, but the differences between reality and my hopes confirmed that my mother was indeed gone for good. Later, after the guests had departed, I lingered at my usual post on the window seat. It was a final test, and she failed it.

My father’s library had been a rather dull room, its shelves imperfectly filled with outdated legal texts, almanacs and encyclopaedias, and volumes of collected sermons bound in liver-coloured cloth of a slippery and repellent texture. But a month or two after my mother disappeared, the old books were removed and new ones installed.

I saw the crates arrive and watched my father directing the delivery men to the library. Returning later, I saw two of the younger cronies unpacking the books, ripping something out of each one before shelving it.

Why are you doing that? I asked.

Following orders, one of them said, without looking at me. The other, whose name was Henry Appleton, looked at me not unkindly. I’ll bet you have something better to do, kid.

I don’t, actually, I replied, making them laugh.

Okay, said Henry Appleton, just stay out of our way. I retreated to a nearby armchair, curled my legs under me and watched them at their task.

They worked quickly, mechanically, eager to get the job done. When all the books were shelved and the crates empty, they put the torn-out papers into the fireplace and burned them. This took quite a long time, during which the men smoked cigarettes and talked, occasionally prodding the papers to encourage the flames. When all had been reduced to a pile of fluffy ash and curled black fragments, they left and I was free to look at the new books.

They were not really new, of course. Many of them were far older than their predecessors and of much greater interest. They must have constituted a library of specially chosen, well-used and possibly well-loved books, which had belonged to one who was a scholar and a person of taste. There was, of course, no clue as to who that might have been, for almost all the bookplates had been torn out.

I was attracted first by the physical appearance of the volumes, after the dullness of the matched sets they had replaced. The bindings were of well-preserved leather, hand-tooled and stamped with gold. Some had prominent ribbed bands, giving them a muscular look, while others were smooth and demure. They sat on the shelves like rows of little houses – houses of words and pictures, full of knowledge. One by one, I took them down and opened them. The damage done by the cronies annoyed me, especially when the torn-out leaves were of marbled paper, which I found fascinating and beautiful. I did not realize that the purpose of their vandalism was to remove any marks of ownership.

Many of the books spoke to me, about travels to strange places or animals I had never heard of before. Others had maps or pictures, the best ones in colour. They showed plants and flowers or parts of the human body, as though someone had taken them apart and drawn what they saw. This horrified me at first, but after a while I found the pictures fascinating and thought of them when I was cutting up chickens or slicing vegetables for Mrs. Petrucci. Her failure to view my tasks as scientific dissections disappointed me.

Books that told stories delighted me. Edgar Allan Poe quickly became one of my favourites. His stories took me to worlds of the imagination so complete in themselves that while I read I would live entirely in the oppressive but nonetheless irresistible situations vividly described by Poe’s often tortured narrators. Such were The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum and the horrible Black Cat. The Fall of the House of Usher, Ligeia, Berenice and especially William Wilson mystified me, but the sense they left me with, of revelations lurking just beyond my comprehension, was compelling. In contrast, the Dupin narratives, with their appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions, were a relief. But my favourite was A Descent into the Maelstrom. The marvel of this tale is that its narrator, while about to be thrust into chaos, has the coolness and presence of mind to analyze the choices available to him and to make his decision a scientific one. To me this was a tale of triumph.

Some of the books were mute – full of words, but none that I could understand. I struggled to comprehend their meanings, especially when the words were almost familiar – aqua nostra, anima mundi, filius philosophorum. Giving up, I decided they were secrets, and wondered if I would ever be admitted to them.

I began to think of the library as my place. Except for the infrequent occasions when my father found it expedient to hold a gathering in a room furnished with books, it was rarely entered by anyone except the maids who came to dust, and me.

Chapter 2

At Christmas my brothers came home from school and the house acquired a greater liveliness and disorder. I must have cherished a final hope that my mother too would come back to us then. When she did not, I broke my months-long silence and asked my brothers for their opinions. I tried to keep my tone light and joking, as though I didn’t much care. Do you think Mother will come back in the new year?

They both looked at me, Hiram Junior in his bovine way, Jeremy with a frown. No, I don’t, said Hiram. She’s gone away for good.

But why? I asked, my pretence of uncaring forgotten. Why would she do that?

Because of you, you little snot, said Jeremy. Haven’t you figured it out by now? She was tired of you always being a pest, hanging around her neck all the time, so she ran away.

No! I said, trying to keep my voice steady, even though I felt like crying. She liked me, I know she did.

Hah! She just pretended. But I could tell. One time she told me – she said, ‘I can hardly wait until that pesky kid goes off to school.’ But I figure she knew you’re so stupid no school would take you, so she’d be stuck with you forever. The way Father is now.

By then I was beginning to blubber. Shut up, Jeremy, said Hiram. Now look what you’ve done.

What do you expect? Jeremy looked disgusted. "Look at him, crying like a baby. A little girl baby."

I went away, hating them both, hating my mother for leaving me to them, and hating myself for my weakness.

Jeremy had brought a friend home with him for the holidays. His name was Roger. His surname is not important, but I will say only that his father owned a number of textile mills and the family was both wealthier and higher on the social scale than ours. Hiram was delighted with the friendship; he obviously saw it as a sign that the Wests were ascending socially.

I wasn’t nearly so pleased. Roger made me nervous. Not only because of his advanced age (fifteen), his size and the loudness of his voice, but because he had taken notice of me. I was used to hiding behind my child’s mask and thus escaping the casual abuse that seemed to be a required part of becoming a Big Boy. But in the person of Roger, the world of Big Boys grew oppressively near.

He used to tease me, not in an avuncular or good-natured way, but with a specific and malign purpose, invariably focused on my appearance, his favourite appellation for me being ‘sweet little Herbie.’ My father’s attentions toward my physical well-being were sporadic at best, and since my governess had been dismissed, no one had bothered to take me in hand and see that I was properly bathed, dressed and combed. A fastidiousness imparted by my mother made me try to turn myself out presentably, but when garments tore or buttons fell off, I didn’t know what to do. My stock of presentable clothes grew steadily smaller as a result, and my hair, already too long when my mother left, was by Christmas nearly to my shoulders, floating about my head like the halo of a disreputable little angel.

The week between Christmas and the New Year had in former years been filled with amusements and entertainments of all kinds. My mother had taken me to children’s concerts and parties at the homes of her friends. In the evenings there were receptions and other gatherings for the adults, either at our house or elsewhere, with the buzz of excitement that attends arrivals and departures, even for those staying behind at home.

That year was different, of course. Once the holiday itself was over, with the necessary ingredients of Christmas tree and presents, but none of the spirit, my father pretty much disappeared. His status in the world had perhaps changed to something like a widower’s. While he did not himself entertain much, he was in demand as a guest. Hiram Junior, at sixteen, was preoccupied with his own circle of friends and sometimes accompanied our father.

At loose ends again, I called on my usual resources. After the flurry of holiday meals, some of the kitchen and household staff departed for a few days off. Those that remained took things easy. There were several Italians among them, so Mrs. Petrucci reverted happily to her native cuisine and included me in the convivial meals they shared in the kitchen. In the afternoons, there was the library. Asking the butler for a fire in the fireplace, I whiled away the hours with books, a dreamy succession of tales and pictures, facts and fancies, ideas simple and obscure.

By that time I had also smuggled a small hoard of books into my bedroom to keep me company at night. They included Poe, an atlas of the world and an illustrated botany whose plates, with their bright colours and wealth of scientific detail, were endlessly satisfying to contemplate. Looking at them just before going to sleep seemed to forestall the nightmares that sometimes came. Mr. Poe’s writings, on the other hand, had the opposite effect, and for that reason were reserved for the early mornings, when, with the light growing brighter beyond my windows, I could safely enter his weird enchanted world of dark deeds and dark thoughts, gloomy castles and hidden secrets, or lose myself in the mesmerizing rhythms of his poems.

On the night of December 30, I was sitting on my bed, leafing through my atlas, letting my imagination loose over the continent of Africa, trying to imagine the places in the heart of the Sahara from the sounds of their names. Tejeri, El Qatrun, Bilma, Agadeni and the Bodele Depression. They tasted strangely on my tongue, evoking oases with palm trees and caravans of camels, or walled desert towns with veiled figures flitting down narrow streets. And what could the Depression be? I pictured a place of treacherous quicksands, or a valley where it was always dark, full of plants with black flowers and furtive scurrying creatures.

I was beginning to nod a little, but was startled awake when my bedroom door banged open and Jeremy came in, followed by Roger. They both wore grins,