'Chosen?'
She nodded.
'Well,' he said, 'who knows? Maybe you have been – but for something else. Something you never even dreamed of.'
He did understand! She was going to enjoy working with this man.
'Anyway,' he added, as if he'd read her thoughts, 'I've chosen you
… and I think it's going to be a very productive arrangement for us both.' He paused. 'I'm a little concerned about one thing, though. This roommate of yours. You're sure she won't be too much of a distraction?'
'Oh, no, not at all. Rochelle and I get along fine. She goes her way, I go mine. If she's bringing somebody home and I have reading to do, I just go in my room and shut the door. We're different sorts of people, that's all. She thinks I ought to get more fun out of life.'
He snorted contemptuously. 'That's all very easy for her to say. She's obviously lost the most precious thing a young girl has.'
For the first time that afternoon Carol thought she saw him glower, but perhaps it was a trick of the light; the room had dimmed perceptibly.
'Take my advice and stick to your guns!' he said, his voice no longer so gentle or so high. 'I wouldn't have anything to do with the men that girl brings home. They're not for you.'
Carol nodded dutifully, only half convinced. 'You sound just like my father,' she said. 'He was very protective of me.'
'Well, of course, of course. That's what fathers are for – to make sure their little girls don't overstep the bounds.' He shook his head. 'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be lecturing you. I'm sure you miss your father very much.'
'Oh, yes. I just wish I'd known him better. But he was so old, even when I was a little girl, that I never really got very close to him. All I can do now, whenever I go home, is buy a new wreath for his grave.'
'Ah, yes, wreaths.' The old man nodded sympathetically. 'I'm half tempted to make them a chapter in my book.'
She felt a tiny chill. 'You mean they're more than just a decoration?'
He nodded once more, but now his face was somber. In the waning light the room had fallen silent, except for the queer singsong echo of a child reading aloud from a book of nursery rhymes. 'Frown thee, fret thee, Jellycorn Hill… ' The sky outside was almost grey.
'You can trace all burial customs back to ancient times,' he said softly, 'just like funeral rites. We put flowers on graves because -well, for the same reason a woman wears perfume. A corpse by any other name would smell no sweeter.'
She bit her lip.
'No,' he said, 'it isn't very pretty, but this is the sort of material we'll be working on together. At bottom, most ceremonies are direct, distasteful, and utterly ruthless. Even the very notion of tombstones.'
'I thought-' She stopped abruptly. Something had fluttered past the window, snowy white against the dark sky and the bricks. She'd glimpsed a flash of wings, as from a falling angel. Or an impossibly white bird. 'I thought tombstones were simply to mark the grave.'
'And also to weigh down the corpse,' he said, his voice louder now. 'To prevent it from rising again.' Taking the briefcase, he moved even farther from the window, and she had to turn to face him. Behind her she heard high, mournful cries; a flock of birds must be passing over the courtyard. She wanted to go to the window and look, but it would have been impolite.
'Mark thee, mind thee,
Jellycorn Hill,' sang the thin, small voice of the child, echoing through the room.
'If Crow don't find thee,
Mousey will.'
He was digging once more in his briefcase. He seemed to be in a hurry. 'Here,' he said, withdrawing a sheaf of papers. 'You should find some interesting material in this batch, and you can consider it your first assignment.' He handed them to her. They were photocopies of articles from various academic journals. She glanced at the top piece and frowned. Celtic Heathendom. An Inquiry into the Epigraphy and Myth-Cycles of Fourth-Century Meath. It looked rather formidable. So did the next. The Ethnology of theA-Kamba. East African, apparently.
'And I'm to summarize all this?'
'That's right. Just a page or two per article. You'll probably enjoy it.'
Looking at still another piece, she doubted this. Report of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits, with Special Attention to – 'Torres Straits? Where in the world are they?'
'The South Pacific' He grinned. 'As you can see, I cast a pretty wide net.'
'Scramble thee, scratch thee,
Jellycorn Hill
The last one seemed innocuous enough. Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders -London, 1879. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. She reminded herself of how much he'd be paying.
'If Mouse don't catch thee,
Moley will.'
He cleared his throat. She looked up to find him holding an open checkbook, pen poised. 'Along with the work, I think it's only fair that I give you some expense money,' he said. 'An advance, so to speak.'
'Oh, that would be wonderful!'
'It won't be much. Just something to tide you over for the weekend.' He winked. 'Now, what name shall I put here?'
The question caught her by surprise. For a moment she had the crazy impulse to give a false name, even though it meant the check would be useless, but immediately she felt ashamed of herself. Rochelle was always making fun of her for being timid; now was the time to grow up. What was she afraid of, anyway? God would watch over her. 'Carol Conklin.'
'Ah!' Beaming, he wrote it in. 'A fine old nederlandse name!'
She nodded uncertainly. 'But I think my mother's people came fromGalway.'
'Ah, yes,' he said. 'I know it well.'
'Hide thee, haste thee,
Jellycorn Hill,
If Mole don't taste thee,
Wormy will.'
He extended a plump little hand. 'And my name's Rosebottom – spelled just the way it sounds. No jokes, please!' His old eyes twinkled merrily. 'You can call me Rosie. Everybody does.'
'Not Mr Rosebottom?'
'Not Mister anything. Not even Aunt or Uncle. Just Rosie.' He slipped the check into her hand. 'I'll come by sometime next week and see how you're getting along.'
With a courtly bow he moved off toward the stairs, swinging his briefcase. Momentarily she saw his little pink head flash between the banisters. Bobbing lower and lower, it disappeared from sight, still smiling.
The first thing Carol did, once the little man was gone, was to examine the check he had handed her. She could barely make out the Aloysius Rosebottom of the signature, for the letters curled like vines across the bottom of the paper, in contrast to the sedate A. L. ROSEBOTTOM printed at the top. Across the middle was written, Thirty dollars even. She wondered if she'd have trouble cashing it; the banks would already be closed.
It was only after she had slipped the folded check into a pocket, and was turning to see if anyone in the room might need her help, that she discovered the little man had forgotten his book. It was lying on the windowsill where he'd left it, a block of pale yellow in the waning light. Picking it up, she was surprised by its weight. It looked considerably older than she'd at first supposed, older than most of the books in the room. The cloth was worn in spots, but the front cover still bore traces of a design – imitation Beardsley, from the look of it – depicting what appeared to be the head of some fanciful animal; Carol could see long, supple horns (or were they antennae?) and great bulging heavy-lidded eyes. The book's spine, too, was ornamented with a Victorian-looking pattern of blossoms and leaves. Most of the tide had been rubbed away, but she managed to puzzle out the words The House of Souls. The white library numerals inked at the bottom seemed almost a desecration.
