Lord of the Far Island, Victoria Holt [world of reading TXT] 📗

'Look at your little sister. Isn't she a love?' I said: 'She's only a half sister. That's not a real one. I'm glad. I don't want a silly baby for a sister.' Baby cries for what she wants and then she smiles when she gets it and everyone comes and looks at her and says how lovely she is and what a good baby, although she has been screaming for something a minute before. I suppose I was a baby once. I don't think they said I was wonderful though."

There were blank pages after that, and then the writing started again.

"I have just read what I wrote when Miss Homer sent me up to do my essay. It made me laugh so much I'm going to do some more. It reminds me how cross she was when she found out I hadn't done my essay. She said: 'I don't know what will become of you.' That's what they all think. I can see it in their faces. What will become of her! I am rather naughty really, although I can be good for a while. 'Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth today,' they say. I wish I could see my father. He doesn't want to see me although he sees Baby now and then. Even he likes to see her. It's something to do with my mother, I think . . . I mean the reason he doesn't like me. He didn't like her. I was the reason, I heard one of the servants say. It's funny to be a reason for something and not know it. Then she died. I was seven then. I remember it was just before my birthday and everyone forgot it—my birthday, I mean. She was buried in the cemetery. I go to her grave sometimes. I cried a lot because she loved me and I didn't really know until she died that nobody else did. Miss Homer doesn't. Nor does Nanny. They say I'll come to a bad end with my tempers and tantrums. My mother used to hide my birthday presents. There was always more than one. I suppose that was because she knew no one else would give me anything and she wanted to make it seem as though they had. But there was always a mystery present. She never said who that came from. I said she gave it to me like the rest but she said she didn't. But after she died I looked for the mystery present and it never came, so that shows it was hers too. I became worse after she died. I do terrible things, like the time I threw Miss Homer's hair dye over the floor when she didn't want anyone to know she used it.

"Then my stepmother came and it all changed and was better for a while. Stepmother used to have them dress me in my white embroidered dress and she gave me a lovely blue sash to wear. I had to go and talk to my father but I knew he didn't like me and only spoke to me because Stepmother asked him to. Baby came then and everybody made a fuss of her and nobody cared about me. My stepmother only cared about Baby and gave up trying to make my father like me.

"Oh dear, this is silly. What's the good of writing down what I know already?"

I wanted to know more, but the pages at the end of the book were blank except one on which she had done a few sums. She had written at the bottom of that page: "I hate arithmetic."

I put the notebook back into the desk. I was in no mood for writing to Esmeralda now.

I took the oars and Jago sat opposite me in the boat. We were going to row to the bird sanctuary, which he was eager to show me. It was not very far from Kellaway Island, he told me, and it would be good practice for me.

It was a beautiful day with a pellucid sea as still as a lake and with that pearly tinge which I had noticed before and which I had thought so attractive.

"It's the best time of the year," said Jago, "before the October gales set in."

"Are they very wild?"

"They can be. On the other hand, they might not come at all. There's only one thing that's certain about our weather and that's its unpredictability. You row very well, Ellen. I can see you're going to be quite a champion."

"I realize that if I'm going to stay here for a little while it's something I have to learn to do."

"If you're going to stay. My dear Ellen, I hope you are going to stay here a very long time." I looked up and was a little disturbed by the intensity of his gaze. "Why not?" he went on. "You are fitting very well into our way of life. You are beginning to love the Island, confess it."

"I'm finding it all very interesting, yes. I don't need to have to confess that, do I? Isn't it obvious?"

"It is and it pleases me. After all, you are a Kellaway."

"There is something about a place which has been the home of one's ancestors for generations. I think that, when I was in Cousin Agatha's house, I was, without realizing it, dogged by the notion that I didn't belong."

"You belong here," he said earnestly.

I was silent, concentrating on rowing. The island sanctuary lay before us, a green hump in the ocean. "Run her up to the beach here," he said.

I was proud that I was able to do so with a certain competence because I had an absurd childish desire to shine in his eyes.

He helped me out of the boat, tied it up and we started to walk up a slope to a kind of plateau. Birds rose all around us, gulls mostly, screaming their indignation at being disturbed.

Jago produced two bags containing scraps of food, one of which