After Such Kindness Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the same, I kneel down and unclasp the lid, letting it drop backwards on its hinges. The chest is full to the brim, just as Mama said. In fact, things start to fall out immediately. There are pieces of paper galore: old drawings, attempts at French and mathematics, exercises in syntax, dreadful poems by the dozen. I sit back and smile at my creations, examining them one by one before piling them up on the floor beside me. Under the schoolwork I find jigsaw puzzles and games and, below them, a large store of reading matter: children’s books, nursery rhymes and fairy stories, all very well-thumbed – some so much so that their binding is coming adrift. Everything is very tightly packed and it’s awkward to dislodge even a single object, but I persevere – tugging out each new thing, turning it over, and placing it on the rug beside me until I’m sitting in a sea of childhood reminiscence.
    After a while, I notice that my hands feel dry and dirty, as if I’ve been digging in the ground, and my back is aching with the effort of bending forward. But I’m almost at the bottom and there has been little of consequence; certainly nothing to deserve the warning sign on the lid. I’m both relieved and disappointed. My mother was right; apart from my books, most of the contents can be left behind for the Arbuthnots. I peer in at the last few items: an album of pressed flowers (incomplete), an India-rubber ball that Nettie once gave me (which I will certainly keep) and something coyly nestling in the corner, something flat and rectangular, wrapped in an old linen bolster-case.
    Seeing it makes me feel faintly sick, and my first instinct is to pretend it’s not there. Because I know exactly what’s inside. I’m aware that I am holding my breath and that my heart is thumping. Daisy buried it deep; she never wanted it discovered. ‘Private’, she said. And there is part of me that knows I should go no further; that I should let it alone; put it out of sight, let my mind dwell on happier things. But another part of me is horribly curious; it tells me to ignore that clutch at my stomach, that dry feeling in my throat. After all (it assures me in its most rational voice), what could there possibly be in an eleven-year-old’s diary for a woman of twenty to fear? It will be interesting, surely, to see what young Daisy has to say for herself. But my heart goes on pounding all the same and it’s some time before I have the courage to reach down and touch the thing – and, even more, lift it out. It feels unexpectedly heavy, just as it did all those years ago when I used to drag it on to my knees and write so carefully between the pale blue lines.
    I unfold the linen wrapping still holding my breath – and there it is – with its red cover, just as I remember, and with bits of loose paper poking out from between the gilt-edged leaves. I look at it – I look a long time – but I don’t open it. My fingers tremble as they even touch it. A warning voice sounds in my head. Best left alone, it insists. Best left alone. I don’t know what to do. I sit with it in my lap for a long while, unable either to open it, or put it back, drawn by curiosity and held back by fear. Then some sound comes up from the landing below – the servant’s voice perhaps, or her broom knocking against the skirting board – and I wake from my daze. I must follow my instinct. There is something dangerous about this thing. It must go back where it belongs, where I won’t have to think about it ever again. I thrust it back into the chest, covering it in a kind of frenzy with whatever comes to hand: the backgammon board, the nursery rhymes, the box of chess pieces, the exercise books, the French grammar, the drawings of kittens and flowers. Finally, I slam down the lid.
    But even as I do so, I know that this is not the answer. Far from being out of harm’s way, it’s simply biding its time, festering until it’s uncovered again. And it will be