Before we got to that, though, we’d stood there in the afternoon, him still holding this book. And then he called Grem, who appeared. ‘Give her this back, will you?’
Grem brought me the book. I was able to take it from Grem. But then I just dropped it on the ground. It wasn’t mine any more.
Then Venn said, ‘Shall we sit down?’ as if we were in a sitting-room. And he sat on the ground, and then I sat on the ground too, where I’d been before, with my back against a tree. Grem and Jotto – and Treacle – had vanished again.
He and I were about fifteen feet apart.
I’d needed to sit. Now I just stared at him, and of course he didn’t even try to meet my eyes.
‘I know how you must feel, Claidi.’
‘Do you? I doubt it.’
‘To take that, to read that – yes, unforgiveable.’ I didn’t say anything. (I didn’t want to talk to him at all. At the same moment I wanted to shout at him on and on.) ‘You see, Grem mentioned you were writing something.’
‘Did he?’
‘I hadn’t questioned him about you, Claidi. At that point I didn’t want to know anything about you. I confess, that’s why I half wanted you left in the outer rooms. Perhaps later I might have been interested to hear about what you did at the House, and in the Tower. But then, I wasn’t sure what you’d tell me would be true.’
I bit my tongue not to start shouting about the Letter.
Venn said, ‘Grem simply told me you kept busy and didn’t cause any trouble. You walked a lot, and you wrote in a book. I realized it was a kind of diary.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s more a journal.’
I refused to like this much-better sounding description.
Venn said, ‘Then, after we spoke last—’
‘Is that what you’d call it?’
‘I felt uneasy. Well, Claidi. I don’t know people very much. There’s Treacle, and Grem, of course, and there was dear old Heepo, before we lost him—’
(??)
‘And my mother, I suppose, if I can count her. She was very stern and distant. She went away when I was nine … Anyway, how could I judge you? You seemed genuine. But I was in the dark.’
I sizzled. Tried not to.
He gave me one of those quick wide glances, and said, ‘I thought, if you kept a journal, you might have put down the truth in it. Of course, I could be wrong there, too. Maybe your journal is all lies and dreams and mad made-up nonsense—’
I yelled then. I yelled quite a lot.
He looked alarmed, and then he just sat there, looking at the broken-off fern frond he was turning in his fingers.
What did I say (yell)? Can’t remember. (He’s right. I should have written it down and then yelled it.) Somehow I’d forgotten about the sinister button thing in the binding. What I said was all about truth, and my being truthful, about that Letter, what he’d done, and I must have gone on for a while.
In the end I just hadn’t the energy to continue. There was a long silence.
‘God, Claidi. Yes, I’m sorry. Sorry. I should throw myself off the Rise.’
‘Why don’t you then?’
‘Because I’m a coward,’ he said. Just that. And then I saw – well, he was crying. I mean, it was almost like Treacle. Tears just ran down his face. And then stopped. But unlike Treacle he had for a few seconds that cold-in-the-head sound one has, if one cries.
In this voice he said, ‘Please understand, I don’t expect you to forgive me. This isn’t an excuse, only an explanation. I just didn’t know any better. I don’t know how I should behave to another person. Not really. I’ve never had much chance to find out.’ By then his voice had cleared. He said, crisply, ‘They’d told me you were – well you read their letter. But I started to have doubts. I thought your book would prove it one way or the other. It has. They lied. Not you. And you – are you. And because you are, I am ashamed.’
I got up and walked off. Somehow I’d picked this book up, too, and I took it with me.
He let me go. No one followed. I ended up quite lost in the gardens, in a jungly bit (like ‘dear old Heepo’?).
I raged, naturally. How could he act so wickedly and then cry – but I kept thinking, it was just what a very young child might do. A kid who did something bad because – it didn’t know any better. And then it saw the damage and got upset. I mean, he wasn’t crying for himself. What had he got to lose? He was crying … because he’d done this to me.
But then I thought, Maybe he thinks everyone has to love him and think he’s nice and wonderful, and he cries when he does something unspeakable so we’ll say, Oh poor Venn, look how sad he is. Better forgive him, he didn’t mean it.
Sunset arrived.
It was when the awful Star rose I remembered the bright awful thing which had fallen out of the binding of this book.
I decided I’d go and find him after all and demand what that was all about.
But next I ridiculously couldn’t find a way out of the jungle area, especially in the dark as the Star moved on.
Finally I heard Jotto calling in a timid voice. I let him find me.
Jotto said, ‘Er, lady dear, there’s some lovely supper but he did say – um – would you sit and eat with him – outdoors?’
‘Oh all right,’ I graciously barked.
Supper was under the flowering tree near my pavilion. (The flowers give off a marvellous perfume at night.) Several cats and other things soon arrived. They always do. (Jotto says a monkey can hear a pie or a mango being sliced from half a mile away.)
Deeply dark black sky and the stars
