Read The Visitors for Free Online Page A

shrank away, fearing some burning reprimand. She gave us a look of scorching contempt, then turned her back on us. Clapping her hands once with a sound like a pistol shot, she dismissed the class.

5
    In the mêlée that ensued as the girls ran off to change out of their ballet clothes, and a crowd of mothers and companions clustered around Madame, Miss Mack and I held back. We hovered nervously on the fringe of the group, and I found we were next to a woman I now recognised as Frances Winlock’s mother. She had changed her dress since I’d glimpsed her that morning at the pyramids, but still looked dishevelled, as if the garments she’d chosen to wear to Madame’s class had been an attempt at smartness undermined by last-minute changes of heart. Numerous drifting scarves were thrown about her neck; perhaps, undecided as to which best suited her, she’d simply given up and elected to wear them all. Her manner was agitated; her eyes, which resembled her daughter’s, were both intelligent and kind.
    ‘Oh, isn’t this awful ?’she said to Miss Mack. ‘It’s such a battleground, everyone fighting for attention… And Madame is a Gorgon – I always mean to protest, then she glares at me, and I freeze. She will push Frances, and make her do things she’s not ready for – she’s only eight, you know, but people forget that because she’s tall, and advanced for her age.’ She paused, and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I’m running on, and we haven’t been introduced. I’m Helen Winlock. It’s my daughter that had the fall… I haven’t seen you here before. Are you thinking of enrolling your daughter in Madame’s class?’ She turned to me, with a wry expression. ‘Are you sure you’re ready for that? It’s nothing short of tyranny. Frances has been reduced to tears many times – you must be about the same age, I think? How old are you, my dear?’
    ‘I’m eleven,’ I replied firmly. I was used to these misconceptions and found it prudent to correct them fast.
    Mrs Winlock, embarrassed at her mistake, began on an apology. Miss Mack, always ready in my defence, came to my rescue. As she later told me, she had at once recognised that Mrs Winlock was not only a fellow American, but also a woman of sympathy; she had noted that her accent was Boston Brahmin and ‘pure Harvard yard’. Drawing Mrs Winlock aside, she embarked on a now-familiar tale. I could hear only some of the phrases, uttered with emphasis and heartfelt pauses, but it was easy enough to join up the narrative: this was my history, my identity. I might not believe it, but I knew it by heart.
    No, neither the child’s mother nor heraunt, merely Lucy’s unofficial guardian… known her dear mother Marianne from way back, had attended her New York christening, her coming-of-age party… Happened to be in England and thus on hand when the great tragedy occurred… Typhoid, horribly sudden; poor Marianne succumbed to complications, Lucy desperately ill, everyone fearing the worst. Luckily had extensive nursing experience, and, in the end, child pulled through… Hair had to be shaved, taking an age to grow back, made her painfully self-conscious, other difficulties too, acute loss of weight, loss of appetite, grief and listlessness… Everyone in state of despair, father at his wits’ end, immersed in his work of course, not very good with children anyway, well, what scholar ever was? Yes, a don at Cambridge, England… Oh, Mrs Winlock was familiar with the world of academe? Well, then, she’d know the situation was hopeless , father simply hadn’t the remotest idea how to care for a child, also… Here Miss Mack lowered her voice, so I caught only two words, ‘ Bad war .’
    Those two words were familiar: my mother had used them once a day: they were a diagnosis that explained everything, the aloofness, the outbursts of temper, the nightmares and the night screams. My father had volunteered in 1914: he left home for the army when I was four and