The Taxidermist's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

completely wiped from her mind. People, too. Connie had never known her mother – she had died giving birth to her – but she had the memory of being loved. A female voice, gentle hands smoothing the hair back from her face. But who was she? An aunt, a grandmother? A nurse? There was no evidence of any other family members at all. Only Gifford.
    From time to time, there were glimpses of another girl. A cousin? A friend? Eight or nine years older than Connie, but with a youthful, spirited air. A girl with a love of life, not bowed down by tradition or proprieties or restrictions.
    At first, Connie had asked questions, tried to piece things together, hoping that her memory would return in time. So many questions that her father could not – or would not – answer. Gifford claimed the doctors advised that she should not try to force herself, that her memory would come back in due course. And although Connie recovered her physical strength, she suffered episodes of petit mal . Any stress or upset could trigger an attack, sometimes lasting only a minute or two; other times half an hour might pass.
    Her father refused, therefore, to talk about anything other than the accident. Even then, he limited himself to the barest facts.
    Spring 1902. April. Gifford was working late in the museum. Connie had woken from a nightmare and, seeking reassurance, had left her bedroom and gone to look for him. In the dark, she lost her footing and fell, from the top of the wooden stairs to the stone floor at the bottom, hitting her head. She’d only survived thanks to a doctor’s urgent ministrations.
    After that, her father’s account became vaguer still.
    Gifford sold up and they moved away, finally settling in Fishbourne. He did not want to be reminded every day of how nearly she had died, and did not want her to be distressed. Besides, the sea air and the peace and quiet of the marshes would do her good.
    The vanished days. Lost, as if they had never been.
    And now?
    Connie couldn’t be certain, but she thought her flashes of recovered memory were becoming more substantial, more frequent. At the same time, it seemed that the moments when time appeared to stop, and she was sucked down into a black unknowing, were becoming less common.
    Was it true? Did she want it to be true?
     
    *
     
    Connie watched as the swans came into land in the orchard of Old Park, where sixty or more nesting pairs had made their home.
    All the birds of the air
    Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing
    When they heard the bell toll
    For poor Cock Robin.
     
    As the sun moved round behind the oak tree, dropping the terrace into shadow, the ghost child was still there, waiting on the edges of Connie’s memory. A girl.
    A girl with a yellow ribbon in her hair.

 
     
    Réaumur received birds from all parts, in spirits of wine, according to the instructions he had given; he contented himself by taking them from this liquor, and introducing two ends of an iron wire into the body behind the thighs; he then fastened the wire to the claws, the ends, which passed below, served to fix them to a small board; he put two black glass beads in the place of eyes, and called it a stuffed bird.
     
    T AXIDERMY: OR, THE ART OF COLLECTING, PREPARING,
    AND MOUNTING OBJECTS OF NATURAL HISTORY
     
    Mrs R. Lee
    Longman & Co, Paternoster Row, London, 1820

 
     
    I am watching you.
    You sense this, I think. Somewhere in the depths of knowledge and emotion, you know. Somewhere, buried deep in the thoughts you think you have lost, you know and you remember. Memory is a shifting, dishonest and false friend in any case. We cherish what does us good and bury the rest. This is how we keep ourselves safe. How we make it possible to carry on in this decaying, corrupting world.
    Blood will have blood.
    The time of reckoning is coming, getting closer with each sunrise and sunset. But it is their own deeds that will be the cause of their undoing, not mine. I did offer them a chance. They did not take it.